Shadowrun: Dragonfall

Lore & Background

Set in 2054, players assume the role of a shadowrunner who has recently arrived in the anarchic free state of Berlin to join a team headed by a colleague, Monika Schäfer. Other members of the team include Dietrich, a former punk rocker turned shaman; Glory, a heavily augmented cyborg; and Eiger, a troll weapons expert and former commando. Their first mission after the player joins them goes seriously wrong. While attempting a routine data theft inside Harfeld Mansion, the team discovers a hidden military compound.

Monika is fatally injured attempting to hack the door controls. Monika mentions something called the 'Feuerschwinge' (German for Firewing) before dying. The team fights off the base's security, encountering a heavily armed ork named Audran before escaping. At their safe house, the team's fixer, Paul Amsel, realizes they were set up and tasks them with tracking their client, Green Winters. The player is voted to be the team's new leader over Eiger's objections.

Reader's Guide

Shadowrun: Dragonfall uses point-based character creation, a classless system, and turn-based tactics. Players can hire mercenaries to assist them during missions as in the previous game, but the player is a part of a preexisting team, and these characters are always available. The Director's Cut adds optional missions to assist your teammates. The standalone director's cut version of Dragonfall (dubbed Shadowrun: Dragonfall – Director's Cut) was released on September 18, 2014.

It features five new missions along with other content improvements, a re-designed interface and improvements to the game's combat system as well as new endings and new music by Jon Everist. Functionality to allow the player to save the game at any time was included, after originally being omitted from its predecessor Shadowrun Returns due to development resource constraints. Dragonfall received generally favorable reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic.

Destructoid wrote that the game did not have any mechanical differences between it and Shadowrun Returns, with the exception of the new save system that they cited as a positive addition. Eurogamer thought that Dragonfall was a much better experience than Returns, praising the freedom, story, character elements, and added sense of intimacy. Game Informer stated that the number of improvements made to the game made it feel more like a sequel than an expansion and praised the tactically engaging turn-based combat, lack of linear design, lore, and party building.

PC Gamer called the title 'one of the most memorable and complex RPG stories of the decade' and heavily lauded the character writing, story, gameplay, and pacing, while taking minor issue with some technical problems.