The Technomancer Review

"TechNOmancer"

Campaign

Taking place on a long time isolated Mars you get a couple options to create your own unique Technomancer character, these are powerful beings capable of harnessing electricity to a degree. This is the last day before you become an officer among your ranks and that's how the training mission goes.

The general game was simple enough taking place in large, but linear spaces that included a number of chests for looting and piles of enemies. It was also quickly apparent that this game is difficult and it doesn't get any easier throughout the entire experience. Even with dropping down to easy it was still painfully challenging to play and I normally have no issues with that at all.

I want to mention this right away as many will get turned away from this, not that it's particularly crushing in difficulty yet in the repetitive mundane and overwhelming assaults from enemies. Each level is packed with enemies with them actually spawning each time you re-enter a space. Many quests had you running back and forth through the same areas multiple times sometimes with ten minutes.

This required you to kill each group of enemies over and over multiple times which was boring as you needed a 20 second chat with an AI, it was painful. This is disappointing as many moments were just purely overkill for enemies and I pushed through it as I found the story intriguing.

There were mysteries around Earth and other conspiracies to discover as explore bits of Mars. You never were free to explore and the areas were again quite linear, but it helped build the wonder around how this place came to be. The length of the story was quite long which is good for fans of that and you'll enjoy it if you can get over the awkward combat.

There are also tons of side quests within the game that really compact the game yet I only slightly dipped into those in order to finish the core game. You also have a number of companions as well which had interesting stories, but were absolutely useless in combat and generally stiff when following you around.

Despite giving slight chatter when something was happening I had hoped for a bit more personality from them. The game also features romance options which were in-depth taking the majority of the story to complete, they were a bit unsatisfying as nothing really happens there.

This was also true in many of the story lines that despite building great mystery or excitement just never delivered when they were finished. Even the overall ending I was a bit "care for more details?" though it does provide a nice tally of the choices you're made. I also felt choices didn't quite weigh in enough with things as I still got away with a lot despite doing things my companions didn't like or even having positive reactions when I did conclude something with enemies being hostiles still for some reason.

I'm remaining vague on this as I don't want to cause any spoilers as it digs a bit into the choices and factions you can get into during the course of the story. I liked some of the choices presented and for the most part the story was well done keeping me going despite the many annoyances. The game was also filled with a number of smaller bugs with quests getting stuck or side quests not being able to be continued due to main quests blocking them.

It was also hard to track where I was going as the map just filled with quest notifications and despite being able to cover them each exit would still have a quest marker instead of giving the most logical exit. This at times caused confusion of where I was headed and caused tiresome extra battles that led nowhere. Still, I did for the most part like the narrative as that's what kept me going though I just felt there wasn't enough payout being too predictable and quick shut.

Gameplay

Technomancer is a third person RPG title having you balance between a number of classes. You get to pick any of these at any time yet the melee battles were cumbersome so I played rogue throughout. This gave the benefit of having a gun to shoot along with a dagger. It allowed a more balanced approach to combat as melee straight fights were just terrible, you'd roll dodge many times and still get hit before you could get a swing making it no fun.

It's also quite awkward when in combat as your companions die quickly and you get caught on things when battling. The balance of the strength was also weird as enemies dealt huge tolls of damage (any of them) whereas you'd hit them multiple times with various weapons to little effect. Despite leveling through the game, improving skills and getting better equipment I never felt it get easier. Despite being this almighty Technomancer I never once felt powerful at any moment in the game.

That aside I liked the class options you could swap behind at any time and RPG elements were well displayed, it just didn't factor into the game much. It was also a bit too focused on using the same areas repetitively instead of giving new places on Mars which I felt was a missed opportunity. The environments did look decent enough though nothing too breathtaking so rather average in views when moving through it, yet nothing was dated looking aside from a couple sun rays or pixel-like poison on one boss.

The Conclusion

The Technomancer presents a decent story line that's hard to enjoy as it's hidden behind an average world and cumbersome combat. I loved the RPG elements within the title, but they didn't factor in enough to the title and despite aiming for that open world feel it was too linear.

There was too much confusion in where you were headed at times with the general story line never hitting the marks it opens up with. I would have also liked to see the companions have a bit more too them as suiting them up and growing as a friend with them over the course of the game is great. The world definitely has potential in terms of lore and development, it just was poorly executed with a game that did run fine.

The Technomancer Review on Xbox One
Review Code Provided by Evolve PR

Rating Overall: 5.4