What I wouldn't give for a decent Shadowrun game

Inspired by my comments in the Shadowrun: Dragonfall review, I thought this was worthy of its own discussion. I know, I know. Everyone thinks Dragonfall is amazing. I don't.

The story is great and I love doing the runs. I like how having a certain skillset will give you easier access or if you don't have a skillset you may have to skip some loot or find an alternative path to complete a run. This is something that was set-up well in Returns and is executed even better in Dragonfall. Almost everything about the game is great. I love the character generation and I like how they've translated the skill system and archetypes over.

The problem is the combat sucks. For the record, I'm not against difficult or challenging fights. I've played both old and new X-Com and am a long-time Jagged Alliance fan. I've been doing the turn-based combat thing since elementary school. What I don't like is a slog. The combat is kind of boring from a spectator standpoint. Nothing like seeing your badass swordsman walk up to an enemy and swing at an enemy like he's using a stick and the bad guy is a pinata. Then there is the fact that combat is pretty much just not well executed. Even when the odds are in my favor, my team misses most of their shots. I've seen multiple consecutive misses when the percentage is 99%. That's not bad luck, that's a broken random number generator. In the meantime, the bad guys are just nailing me. On regular 1-to-1 fights where my team is about the same number as the opposition, it's not a problem. Boring and repetitive, but not a problem. For larger groups or combats strung together, it's just flatout not fun.

This brings down the whole experience because combat is essential to the Shadowrun experience but it's also the longest portion of the game. I find myself wishing I could skip the fights. Problem is, I found a cheat code (been playing on the PC) but found that doing actually removes any conflict and thus killed my motivation to continue. So combat is NECESSARY for Shadowrun to be interesting, but combat as it exists in Dragonfall is a chore.

I'm hoping the new Hong Kong game will alleviate some of this. I didn't expect Dragonfall to be a huge departure from Returns, however it did a better job in all other departments that I was hoping maybe they found a way to make the fights more of a gaming experience and feel less like work in the middle of my fun. Nope.