Shadowrun Returns

I was one of the original backers for this game back when the Kickstarter campaign was funded, since I'd originally owned the SNES game and I loved it. I recently played both Dragonfall and Hong Kong, which evolved from being stretch-goal DLC's from the original Kickstarter into full-fledged sequels that improved upon the game, and I loved the experience, so I decided to go back and replay this one, since my memory is a bit fuzzy and I just remember some vague details about the story and that it resembles the sequels visually and mechanically but it was a shorter, simpler game that, in my memory, felt more like a demo or introduction to the two sequels. I'm actually kind of surprised that it's much better than I remember. This time around, you're a retired Shadowrunner who's dragged back into the life after an old friend's death triggers a video recording asking to solve his murder in exchange for 100,000 bucks, which takes you to Seattle. Compared to the sequels, It's more similar to the original SNES game in the sense that it's more of a solo endeavor where you sometimes cooperate with some NPC's to address a specific mission and you can hire Shadowrunners to back you for a specific mission, so it does feel different than Dragonfall and Hong Kong because you don't have a core team with their own sub-quest lines and all that and, and most of the investigating and non-combat is done solo. This means that completely neglecting some skills will lock you out of some options during normal gameplay, since you don't have your team around with you to hack into things or kick down doors or whatever skills or attributes you didn't pick for your main character. It also means that, except for some characters that join you for specific missions, you mostly have to hire your team members for each specific mission, so you can accidentally make things way more difficult than they need to be if you blow your money on gear and you end up not having enough money to hire at least one extra character to back you up. The writing is also better and more interesting than I remembered, and I think the game does hold up rather well, though it ultimately does end up feeling a bit like a sketch or earlier simpler draft of what ultimately became Dragonfall or Hong Kong, since it's somewhat simpler, doesn't really have much in the way of side-quests in the same sense the sequels do, you don't have companions with their own quests and backstories, and the total run time of the full campaign is about half as long as any of the sequels. In sum, the three games together work very well as a trilogy and each one manages to improve upon its predecessors. The fact that I had fun with this one on this replay even though I played the sequels first, instead of feeling I went back to a much worse game is proof that it's a solid game on its own, and it's elevated by its sequels. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that Jake Armitage, the main character from the original SNES game, actually pops up a couple of times during this game and he is even a playable character that backs you up in some missions. In my memory he just showed up at some point in the game as an easter egg for the fans of the OG Shadowrun and you got to talk to him for a bit and that was it, but I was completely misremembering that.