Review — The Technomancer

The Technomancer

We sit down and review The Technomancer. It’s the developer’s next foray into the RPG realm with a cyberpunk feel. Here’s our review of The Technomancer

Here we go with another lesser known RPG game set in a weird future in terms of The Technomancer. This would be the latest RPG title that Spiders has put out on the PS4, Xbox One, and PC and so far it has been getting mixed reviews. Thankfully Focus Home Interactive gave us the chance to check out The Technomancer and give it a solid play-though. We put the game through its paces and now is the time to let you all know if you should add this game to your play list, back log, or steer clear list. Here is our review of the game as it stands right now.

Story

Get ready to be transported into the future well after Earthlings have taken over the red planet and thus created Martians. It’s 200 years after the “Water War” that took place on Mars and corporations have taken over portions of the planet. Also due to the world’s environment and other events it looks like there are a lot of mutants on the planet. Some of them are hated and other revered as the protectors call Technomancers. They can control electricity and other abilities but are secret mutants and you now play one who has been trained and now on the run with a wacky cast of companion characters.

Hated

I was truly excited to see how well the three different fighting styles in The Technomancer played together. The demos before the launch made them seem so seamless and all needed. One was less true than the other though. As it plays out changing between the forms never felt smooth and I was “left open” many times when just trying to get ready to strike in a different way. Between this and just my normal play style this had me staying on one style that I liked and never swapped again unless it was completely needed. Pretty much always having my Techno powers up and active was the way to go and this feature quickly just moved into the unneeded category.

Given that the story of The Technomancer looks to borrow a lot of elements from a lot of other great sources, Total Recall being one, I was excited to get right in and fall in love with the story and stories of the game’s world. While none of that was overly horrible, their presentation was very dull and lackluster. Almost like there wasn’t much personality to share on Mars and only a very select few got a piece of the pie there. Sometimes not even the character types whom would need to have a dynamic personality to be where they are in the game’s world. It’s almost as if the writers wanted to focus on very few characters and the rest, no matter their level of inclusion, were still background noise.

Last up here would have to be the navigation and traversal in the game’s world. The world here in The Technomancer was pretty vast so there would be a good need to be able to get around fast and or with ease. I always seemed to get lost or follow a path that led to a dead end so many times that it became frustrating. Even more so when doing a mission that was timed using in-game time and not real world time. That would make sense of course for the time, but only if it didn’t take me literally 20 minutes to figure out how to get around one wall in the district to get lost in the next only to find out there was a path that could have been taken since the beginning.

Loved

One of the best aspects here had to be some of the creature design in The Technomancer. In every game the developers have to plan out the ecology of the game’s world and most of the time the easy path is taken to base things off Earth’s ecology. While Spiders did borrow some from our world here they did do an amazing job of filling in everything that felt like it would exist on Mars and in the environment that was set up based on the history in the game. That was quite an impressive feat and in some cases I felt bad for having to kill some of the creatures just because I wanted to look at them a bit longer in their living form.

While I did gripe on the styles that were built here not all being needed, I will say that the one that I stuck with the whole game was well implemented and things only became tricky when I tried to fight higher level and more dangerous characters/creatures. A lot of games don’t always have that but here in The Technomancer there was a form made for my style of play and it was nice to be able to play through the whole game using it. I know that wasn’t the aim of the design but it worked out well and I am sure that everyone will find their “go to” style and will feel that it flows and works for them as they ignore the rest when they can.

Lastly, even though it was hard to get into the story that was built here in The Technomancer due to pacing I won’t deny it was a fun one to play through. It wasn’t overly mind-blowing but I never felt like I was missing out on anything except more exciting characters. They all had their own little bits to add to the game and they all worked out well. I would have loved a better presentation for sure but it was good enough to stand alone even if I was trying to force my attention to listen due to the very dry delivery.

Overview

In the end, The Technomancer has some great things to offer and some setbacks that need to be overcome. I did enjoy my time with the game and the story that I was able to play out but I think it takes a very specific audience to fully enjoy this game. The Technomancer is not for everyone and for the most part if the game’s description and videos never made you excited for it then you never will be. As long as those who did get excited before the launch, take a few things into consideration and you will enjoy the game from start to end. This one can really be judged on the promotional materials in the end.

I give The Technomancer 3 Fighting Styles on the Fighting Style scale.

The Technomancer was developed by Spiders and published by Focus Home Interactive for the PS4, Xbox One, and Windows on June 28^th, 2016. A PS4 copy of the game was provided by the publisher for reviewing purposes.