Making a Sci Fi RPG is a daunting task with so many benchmark titles that you have to follow in the footsteps of but cast a huge shadow such as Mass Effect. It is something that the developer studio Spiders just keeps trying to punch above its weight to make a good RPG game with attempts to go into fantasy RPG with Bound by Flame and their previous Sci Fi attempt with Mars: War Logs. Now they are back with a second go at Sci Fi RPG with The Technomancer but after reviewing Mars: War Logs, I was curious to see if any lessons had been learned or if once again the quality was lost in the ambition.
The Technomancer returns to Mars about 200 years after it was colonized and the planet is a battleground where huge corporations fight for control and crime is abundant. As the player you take the role of a rookie Technomancer Zachariah, a cybernetically augmented soldier with the power to harness electrical powers who is on the run from the secret police who finds himself embroiled in a tale on mystery and conspiracy to unravel the secrets of the Technomancer order whilst trying to bring justice to the Red Planet. Just as with Mars: War Logs, this game tries to use aspects from many successful RPG games such as Mass Effect and Witcher series to bring its story to life in its gameplay, but sadly Spiders Studio yet again makes the cardinal sin of getting carried away with what it wants to deliver over what they are capable of delivering and the result is sadly a rather average mess.
The size and scope of this game is rather impressive, that does deserve to be recognized from the start and in some way I do want to give the developers credit for being courageous enough to go as big as they did with this game. The reality is that although they do try to emulate what has worked well in other RPG games, it never really achieves what they hoped it would. It all feels a little underfunded and therefore just like Mars: War Logs and Bound by Flame, never stops feeling like a cheap substandard version of the big hitters in RPG games. The visuals for example are rather dark and dull for a good portion of the first few hours of gameplay, from the cosmetic items you equip to the environments the missions take place on. It all has the standard sci fi feel and look to it but can be really drab after a while which then bleeds into the movement animation which feels really stiff in the movement both in and out of combat.
City’s all have different areas and population sections all connected by a series of side and back streets to explore and traverse down showing an impressive design layout but then it is filled with annoying NPC’s which brings me to my next criticism, the voice acting. It is just so wooden and devoid of any passion in the delivery of dialogue either as Zachariah or those he will interact with. Hearing “I do not have the required skill level” constantly becomes really tedious and having NPC’s repeat the same chat lines just irritating. One of the main gameplay mechanics is having player choice in dialogue scenes which have the ability to gain information for the mission, discover secret areas or items or even mid combat to end the situation peacefully. So having such a bland and under performing voice acting element takes away from this feature to the point I rarely wanted to engage in any conversations outside of shops and key character moments.
The combat for me is perhaps the biggest letdown yet purest example of how much the developers have overreached with The Technomancer. In combat you have three fighting stances which you can hot switch too depending on the level of opponents you face. From using a bow staff, to shield sword or pistol and dagger. Choosing which one to use very much depends on which fighting style you feel comfortable with. Each can be upgraded by improving your weapons and then augmented with your Technomancer abilities. It is a combat style that tries to mirror the system used in the Witcher games but it all ends up feeling far too cumbersome, which only becomes more exacerbated when the combat kicks it up a notch. When you face a one on one or one on two situations the combat can feel very precise and rewarding. Sadly though the game will more often throw groups of enemies at you, groups who will be better armed and provide a real threat from the moment the tutorial section ends and the combat then becomes very sluggish and cheap and I died a good few times just walking around the back streets in areas being ambushed, even if the fight is not provoked by you, if they see you they will chase you and attack.
The game will provide you with the chance to take companions with you, and in combat the AI of your companions can be so terrible that your allies will often not really be that at all, and may quickly fall or forget to revive you if needed. You can upgrade their armour and weapons but the combat can often just feel very flat and very annoying when they let you down. This is ultimately how The Technomancer ends up making you feel as a player, just let down by how it tries to do so much and on the surface has the potential to offer so much greatness but gets buried under all that it tries to do.
The Technomancer falls into the same problem previous Spider Studio games suffer from; the scope of the ambition for the game is greater than the delivery and execution of it. The main quest is a good 25 to 30 hours of gameplay, which is extended should you take on all the available side missions but while that all sounds good, the tedium of the side missions and frustrations of the combat and upgrading mechanics just turn it all into a dull grind. In its attempts to imitate the big names in this genre by borrowing what made them work so well, The Technomancer is really a “looks good on paper” experience but the final result simply fails to live up to the potential. I do wish that the developers would focus on delivering what is in their limits to do because when they go too far outside their comfort zone, it becomes a messy blur that is off putting to continue playing for the length of time the story requires. I played it on both Xbox One and tried it on Playstation 4 with little difference to the issues it has which are in the core of the game itself.
As a game experience it fails more than it succeeds, but in daring to go big by offering so much to do, it would have benefited far more from being scaled back with more polish given to key sections and the finer details to give a solid experience instead of juggling so many factors that it becomes a poor imitation and glaringly so.
