Antumbra is sadly getting on my tits. I really dig the writing and atmosphere that the modder did (seriously, it's very good), but the gameplay... Jesus, where to start?

Trauma kits are now apparently worthless, despite the game throwing them at you and offering them for sale. I got knocked on my ass several times with the game cutting straight to a 'game over' without me being able to avail myself of one of the two kits I had on me. I can only imagine the lengths that the modder went to in order to make such a thing possible, let alone why they thought it was a good idea.

Arbitrarily restricting the player to one additional Shadowrunner is exceptionally poor design. The whole point of working with a crew in Shadowrun is that the group has a variety of skills that enable them to work as a single unit capable of tackling a variety of obstacles. Here, it's you and just one other schmuck, meaning that you will be running severely undermanned, even with the scaled down (and subsequently dull) combat encounters. I appreciate that the modder took the time to give the individual runners banter and all that, but what exactly was stopping them from also making it possible to hire a number of them?

Shameless railroading was what ultimately made me quit. I don't mind linearity in gaming; in fact, I'm more prone to fault a game for being so open and unstructured that it destroys any sense of narrative cohesion *cough*UltimaBaldursGate*cough*. That said, when you have a character who is crucial to your plot and want them to survive, you make sure that they leave the area before anyone can get a shot off at them. What you do *not* do is have them move towards the exit, stop right next to the runners, allowing them to unload on the guy only to find out that nothing can take him below a single health point. Not only is it lazy design, it ultimately makes the resulting fight that much harder without reloading, because I just wasted a round on trying to kill an invincible low level metahuman who can take my Scorpion and my companion's H&K at point blank range.

I finished Antumbra trilogy (Dragonfall DC one) with best ending and max gained forces to repel attack. I played as Elven Street Samurai on Normal and that was very tight in terms of resources and cash management. The catch is you can't kill fire spirit or it's master (I won't post their true names due to spoilers) but one of your party members must die once to progress story... and there is possible glitch if you get close to fire spirit when he speaks of your demise, if you summoned any spirit in field, he can attack you to death so better not seek any shaman aid in battle or you will be stuck in death-loop.

Third episode is very accurate in re-creating of year 2053 from official Shadowrun timeline which makes this UGC even more special.

Turns out there is a plot reason for the invulnerable troll... kind of. The first time let me take him down to one HP, whereas the rest of the time it showed that he was 'immune'; the latter approach made it clearer that something was up, but I think it could have been better signposted with one of the PCs noting that their attacks are doing nothing. So that clears up one of my major problems with the mod. I can't speak as to whether the trauma kit thing was fixed in later chapters, but the number of companions does get upped later on, so that's something, I guess.

Without saying too much, though, the last section of the game made me eat my words. This is the first UGC I actually had a good time with by the end of it (annoyances aside). I can easily see myself recommending it, albeit with a few warnings about some of the design choices.

For SR Hongkong: Dead Mans Switch Vox Populi is a great remake of Shadowrun Returns.
Highly recommended.

Also still +1 to A Stitch in Time for SRR.

Yea, I alao played Vox Populi the other year.
AFAIK no difference to the original Dead Mans Switch, except for the better combat mechanics.
So.. job well done and worth playing if one doesnt remember the original story too well.

... and now the thread is fully necroed, I edited the OP to add Caldecott Caper,
A run for HK by the maker of Atumbra, using many same NPC:s, continuing the story and being just as good.

Also by the maker of Antumbra Saga and Caldecott Caper: CalFree in Chains. This one requires Hong Kong however.

Haven't gotten round to playing Shadowrun in some time so haven't tried it out, but I suspect it's at least on par with the above? It's a continuation of the storyline of Antumbra in a very broad sense (albeit with a different runner).

Oh yeah, I totally forgot it was two different modules and not one long one.
Yeah, same broad storyline beginning with Antumbra continues on through Caldecott and finishes with Calfree.

And yeah, they are goood.

Seeing the multiple necros in this thread, I don't mind posting, lol.

Does it matter which Shadowrun game I use mods with? I've played both SRR and SR:DF, and I can see there's a big difference in combat formulas.

Generally, mods tend to be for one or the other - they'll tend to either not work on an incorrect version, or if they do work, they may work strangely (or at the very least, in a very unbalanced way).

I believe most (if not all) of the good mods are available for Dragonfall (the ones that started out for SRR have since been converted).

There are a couple that have been released for SR:HK - I don't think those work for any non-HK SR game. There aren't that many of them though.

It's a punishing game: you will need a combat-focused character to progress, and the same "death by a thousand cuts" damage means that healing is still impaired (consecutive bleeding or similar prevents restoring large quantities of hitpoints). Each character definitely needs to take cover every turn.
At the moment I'm playing through on hard difficulty, with a magic user (arcane with a dash of conjurer) and, separately, a troll adept.

But, as I know from completing it earlier, the game is almost as good as the Caldecott Caper, which I rate just below Dragonfall, and above Returns and HK.