Tom Powter reviews The Technomancer…
It dawned on me fairly quickly that The Technomancer, despite its disappointing presentation and overly-cumbersome gameplay, was actually trying legitimately hard to tell a compelling story. With its intriguing concepts and well-voiced plot, it’s a shame then that the game is let down by a multitude of factors, all of which come together for a rather unremarkable package.
The Technomancer, by developer Spiders, is an action-RPG in which you take control of the titular Technomancer, Zachariah, a human with the ability to control electricity. As part of a settlement of humans who have been abandoned on Mars, you now fight a ruthless corporation for control of the peoples’ most precious asset, water, while trying to avoid mutation and a cruel caste system that has those that are actually still somewhat human, fighting each other.
The premise is certainly interesting, so it’s a surprise that the majority of Mars is a dull, bleak place void of any character or personality. The beginning of the game is especially egregious in this regard. The characters spend their time in boring, bland facilities with little-to-no colour, while most of the NPCs look almost identical. Stiff (and heavily repeated) animations don’t help either. In fact, the game’s presentation is hugely inconsistent, though it varies more towards lacklustre than any good. Sometimes you’ll get some decent-looking textures, but for the most part, this looks like a last generation game.
Speaking of the start of the game, immediately upon starting up you’re thrown into a relatively shallow character creation system. One of the problems here however is that despite being able to choose the look of the character, you’re still playing a set character regardless. This isn’t an avatar for you – it’s a character, and one devoid of any particularly interesting assets. It feels as though Spiders perhaps wanted to go the traditional RPG route and make the playable character an avatar, but didn’t want to jeopardise the story, which they’ve admittedly done anyway by having Zachariah be so dull.
Once you’ve made it through that, The Technomancer asks you whether or not you’d like to complete an assortment of samey tutorials that help you learn the basics of combat. Unfortunately, despite the tutorials being a pretty drawn out process, you’d better finish them – The Technomancer is not afraid to throw an abundance of confusing menus and systems at you, with little-to-no explanation for any of them. There’s some obvious inspiration here, for more than just the menus. CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3 has clearly been drawn from, only with considerably less personality and artistry.
The combat, also, takes a number of cues from other games. There are different stances to choose from, such as Guardian, which fits you with a makeshift shield, or Rogue, which allows you to fight more nimbly. You’re able to change stances on the fly as you play, enabling you to swap tactics if something isn’t working out for you in the midst of battle. It’s definitely an interesting system, but unfortunately I didn’t find much use for it. Enemy AI isn’t particularly clever and I found that simply battering people with the same weapon over and over was good enough. Throw in some well-timed dodges and the fact that you can heal yourself while moving and the combat system becomes pretty simple.
The Technomancer has definitely taken inspiration from The Witcher with its combat, and perhaps even the Arkham games too. Both of those games offer fluid combat that allows you to jump between enemies at will, stringing together a multitude of strikes. The Technomancer looks like it wants to do the same with its dynamic stance swapping system, but, as with the rest of the game, controls are clunky and the actual motion is stiff and rigid. The game doesn’t capture the finesse of The Witcher’s swordplay, or the pulse-pounding sense of being a badass that Arkham brings. Attempting to swap stances during a fight, especially early on, is a cumbersome nightmare and only serves to break up the flow of combat. Besides, you’ll only be any good at fighting so long as you make sure to fill up the many, almost purposefully obtuse skill trees you’re presented with.
To Spiders’ credit, I don’t doubt that a lot of work has gone into this game. For all of its flaws, it does some things fairly well. The story is certainly interesting to a degree (though the ‘massive revelation’ at the beginning falls spectacularly flat) and the voice acting, for the most part, is actually pretty good. Despite the generic look of the characters overall, the enemy designs can be wild and intimidating, especially some of the alien bosses. Not only that, but Mars is a large place, with plenty to see and do in it. Crafting, questing, weapon upgrading, dialogue choices, decision-based gameplay – it’s all here. And perhaps that’s the problem.
The Technomancer is launching in a generation where we have already seen quite a few RPG masterpieces – The Witcher 3, Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3 and Fallout 4 to name just a few. Rather than treating one aspect of development with a laser-focus, Spiders appears to have tried to cram just about every RPG element under the sun into the game, perhaps to make it appear as fleshed out and interesting as those that came before it. Sure, if they pulled it off, the game would be colossal and stunning, a la The Witcher, but they just miss the mark.
The Technomancer isn’t a failure, but during my playtime with the game, I couldn’t help but think about how utterly dismal the first hour with the game is. It’s a boring romp through text and menus with bad combat in an uninspired, muddy landscape and I can’t help but feel like it will turn people away. In Spiders’ quest to turn The Technomancer into a RPG capable of duking it out with the best, they’ve sacrificed one key element – fun. The game isn’t fun at all. Being a Technomancer should feel amazing, but it doesn’t. In fact, this one just fizzles out.
Pros:
+ Interesting premise and story
+ Decent voice-acting throughout
+ Tries to do some new things with combat…
Cons:
– …but the multitude of systems often feel unnecessary
– Looks like a last generation game
– Repetitive and boring gameplay mars the experience
– World is devoid of personality and character
Rating: 5.5/10
Reviewed on Xbox One
Tom Powter
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