I´m almost through the 3rd of the 4 chars. A few impressions - helps me structure my thoughts for the review
:
1. Johnson (heavy arms) -> demo
The most simple and most straight forward char. Not much thinking necessary. Not that impressive but so easy that you´re through quickly. I would call it a nice warm-up.
2. Kenji (Katana, dual pistols)
Clearly better. You have the choice between developing your skills for Katana or dual pistols, which requires a different focus.
3. Victoria (Psi attacks)
Again clearly better and more interesting. She is a mage type, weapons are rather worthless. She can practically only (!) use genetically modified Bioware (!), which both limits the choice because it excludes Cyberware and is very expensive.
4. Jessica (Hacking)
No comment yet.
The chars are very different, the story short. It´s impossible to max out the stats on your first run through the story. Good replay value, so I don´t think the people criticizing the game´s not long enough are right.
Graphics:
2D, Good enough, constantly 63 fps - no matter what happens on screen, nice big explosions. The real-time shadows are much better than you would expect after looking at the screenshots. The generated dungeons suffer through the limited number of tylesets, though.
FMVs:
Dynamic and action packed. Medium quality. Nothing to complain. You can make choices in the middle of a FMV, sometimes. It´s interrupted and you can make your decision. Very well done. Unfortunately this doesn´t happen often enough.
Sound, etc.:
Great voice acting, very good f/x, two good sound tracks. The whole sound department is strong.
Stability & bugs:
So far there was a patch ~ every 10 days, the next is announced for this week. The release version was buggy. Now it´s much better, all stability issues are solved, many gameplay bugs also. Still a handfull serious bugs left, but they stay in the background. Now it´s stable and very playable.
No Starforce. The used CP seems to be harmless. I´ve only seen less than 10 people in the forums who thought they had CP issues (which of cause turned out to be configuration problems).
Action:
Hard & Fast. Try the demo - this is the slowest action you´ll see in the game. All chars have at least one of the following skills: running speed, attacking speed, casting speed, recovery after an attack, strafing, teleport, rescue jump.
Balancing:
Neither perfect nor unfair. The difficulty doesn´t grow constantly, it jumps. This can still be improved.
Interface:
Very good. Clean, fast, stylish and unobtrusive. All 3 mouse buttons can be configured. Quicksave and quickload have been patched in.
MP:
I didn´t try it yet. Forum talk says it´s unplayable.
Misc:
-items can be exchanged between the chars
-the few NPCs react differently towards the main chars
-items can be put aside at the shop if you don´t have the money yet.
-an equivalent to set items exists. ("Company bonus")
-items can be made according to your specifications if you have a blank (?). I had a left arm made for Vicky. 4 stats improved as far as possible (-> 200k $) and then the arm modified for Vicky (120k $). The average mission earns you 50-70k. The arm was worth it, though.
-weapons can be enhanced. Expensive.
-Arms and legs can be "turned around". Left becomes right and vice versa. All this means money is never useless.
-enemies don´t respawn in cleaned areas/levels
-You sometimes find "self-learning weapons".
Conclusion so far:
A nice little effective game. Mediocre starts, but thankfully it gets better with growing complexity. Definitely better than most Diablo clones. Some nice ideas. Twice the budget and it could have been a real killer.