Basically what I’m saying is: the Matrix segments don’t have to be a game. This is where Shadowrun keeps going wrong; it keeps trying to make it this whole other thing when it’d be far more effective to have it be an almost entirely passive experience where success or failure is determined by a few meta-game choices – just like in a text adventure. Then you can spend the development resources on drawing some really, really good art for it, like the pagodas in the image towards the end of the review.

I did not know about the cheat option. It would probably have made it all a much more pleasant experience.

The new Matrix just isn’t fun at all. They needed to do something different from the reskinned normal combat mode of the last games, but I think they took a wrong turn here with the real-time Watcher IC avoidance and the silly match puzzles. It felt like a worse grind than the previous games, and that’s saying something. About halfway through the game I just started going into the Ctrl-F1 debug menu to cheat and insta-kill everything in my way. I rationalized it as being such a hot Decker that I knew the backdoor codes. Breezing through the Matrix made the rest of the game much more fun to get through.

A more minor gripe is the weak-sounding gunfire audio FX. Just little chirps and chiffs, like everything has a silencer. It lacks the punch of the gunfire in X-COM:EU, or the flintlock guns in Pillars of Eternity. In a game where the graphics are are somewhat sparse, the audio FX has to do more of the heavy lifting.

Anyway, I’d recommend the game to those who enjoy this kind of RPG, but keep in mind the Ctrl-F1 cheat option if the Matrix hacking gets too frustrating.