Last night, a friend of mine reminded me that we haven't played the Shadowrun RPG since November of 2011. That time lapse is why I hadn't heard about Crossfire until this week, even though it came out earlier this year and has been getting press since 2013. Hearing about the game this week is what prompted the conversation about Shadowrun at all.
I really like deck-builders. I really like co-op games. I really like the Shadowrun universe. I am perfectly fine with the expectation that a 25% win rate starting out is good. Having read a bunch of reviews and discussions about the game, and watched a couple videos of gameplay, I'm extremely interested in trying it out...and maybe even buying two copies to see how well it'd work with more than four players on a team.
So, I'm curious - anyone on these forums have any experience with this game?
I'm sure I'm an anomoly, but I definitely didn't enjoy it. I didn't feel like I had any interesting choices. I honestly felt like I was just going through the motions of the obvious things I had to do / deal with. We honestly didn't have a good experience, getting things that just slaughtered us.
It was a couple months ago and I have tried not to think about it much, since, so I don't have any details (sorry). Hopefully other folks enjoyed it, though... ?
I don't think you're an anomaly. I've read a number of reviews of people who got frustrated with the game, or felt that it was poorly scaled between starting and advanced characters. From what I've seen of it, it seems very much catered to the fans of the Shadowrun game setting, and not so much to people who enjoy gaming for the sake of the game itself. I don't know if either of those apply to you, but I suspect that most of the people who do enjoy it are there for the thematic aspect.
When I get a copy and get some friends together to play it eventually, I'll likely recommend that we add a storytelling component to it. For example (I'm going to steal the obstacles from Rahdo's YT video) rather than just saying "Okay, for the first scene of the mission we've got a Light Combat Drone and a Gang Leader as obstacles...the LCD has 5 health levels that consist of four generic damage, one green, one generic, one black, and one generic...the GL has 3 health levels that consist of one red, three generic, and one red" we'll say something like "Okay, we've done the datasteal and now we're trying to sneak out of the corp site, but a Light Combat Drone is blocking the hallway up ahead and one of Joe's contacts, a Gang Leader, chooses NOW to call him up and bend his ear over turf negotiations. We're going to need to keep that drone busy while our decker can disrupt its connection to the corp rigger, then open it up and shoot out the power cell. Joe's gonna have to do some fast talking and maybe drop some threats of personal violence to get that guy off the line and let him focus."
Also, one of the mechanics of the game is the idea of your character gaining Karma (like experience) and getting upgrades for future games - if you only played it once, you're not going to see any of that at all unless you decide to start out at a higher power level just to try the upgrade traits. I don't think that would've made a huge difference in your enjoyment of the game, but if you ever give it another shot, that might be something to try out :)
Actually, I'm a big fan of the Shadowrun setting. I played the game years ago, but haven't made an opportunity to play the newer versions (where they've apparently fixed a lot of the issues the earlier versions had).
We did talk through the use of Karma and how a character can be upgraded, but it felt arbitrary. The game didn't really feel very playable without it - one of the thoughts we had was to just start with an upgrade or two to help make the game playable, but that didn't feel like a good approach to me.
Who knows - I might try it again. But with all the games that are out there (and that are coming) that I already know I enjoy, it just doesn't seem like it's worth the time to me to play a game that's potentially not going to be enjoyable.
But I'm pretty picky about what I'll spend time on.
I hope you really enjoy the game! And if not, I hope you at least enjoy spending time with the friends you are playing with.
I played the game years ago, but haven't made an opportunity to play the newer versions (where they've apparently fixed a lot of the issues the earlier versions had).
And if not, I hope you at least enjoy spending time with the friends you are playing with. 