Review: The Technomancer

The Technomancer reminds me of a drunken friend who’s trying to tell me a story of a wild night they had, but, at the same time their drink is going everywhere and their movements are slow and drawn out. The thing is though, I’m okay with it because at the end of it all, it’s my friend who’s investing precious drinking time to tell me something cool. That’s Technomancer to me.

This is a sequel set during the same war in Mars: War Logs and this week’s release The Technomancer, we return to a Mars that is controlled by the corporations. War has come and water is scarce, and the are waging for these precious resources and as Zachariah Mancer, one of the titular Technomancers, you are caught in a power struggle between the people and the secret police of one of the corporations.

So what is a Technomancer? From what you learn in-game they are a mysterious faction not too different from Jedi and are imbued with electrical powers (hence the name) they are one of many factions in game.

Spiders Entertainment has borrowed ideas from a catalogue of different RPG games. There is a heavy influence of the Witcher series, there is hints of Mass Effect and Deus Ex. It should work. It kind of does, but there is a lack of polish and shine that really takes away from the influences instead of building upon them. I’m all for improving upon other’s ideas and welcome change, the issue I had was how clunky each borrowed part felt.

The Technomancer isn’t all bad, far from it even, I love the setting for one, I love the multiple factions we discover and learn about. There’s a battle system that oozes potential but never realizes it misses its chance to be something special.

The basics of combat included three different fighting styles to choose from on the fly. You can pick a Warrior which allows you to use a shield and club combo, Guardian which gives you a staff to take on enemies, and lastly a Rogue which gives you a knife and gun combination. As you level up throughout the game you learn new electric abilities that give Zachariah the winning edge in combat. It’s got some great ideas that feel misplaced.

You also are allowed two companions to bring along to fight with you and as such you can develop them by upgrading. There is some backstory for each one and why they are joining Zachariah.

The voice acting is not something I usually complain about, for the most part companies have found a groove that works for them. The voice acting here though can be grating and is not the standard you come to expect from a title in 2016. This is of no fault of the developers own, not entirely at least. This isn’t an American developer, this is a French company doing it’s best at what we normally get from their American counterparts.

Graphically we aren’t looking at the prettiest game on the PS4, by comparison it looks roughly the same on all platforms from what  I was able to see, the game feels a few years behind current technology and the game suffers from it. It is by no means an ugly game, it’s just not up to the standards we’re used to in 2016.

I know it seems like I’m being rather negative towards the game. There’s a lot of good content here and you see it in the game. The problem lies in the finesse, it lacks the touch to make it from an okay game to and excellent adventure. I can’t recommend the game at full price, not with how many issues plague the game, this might be the studios most ambitious game to date but it is far from a full priced game I can say spend your money on.