Info about The Technomancer:

Official game description:
  
**The Technomancer** is a sci-fi RPG set on Mars, featuring **dynamic combat** and an epic story line, where your choices will affect the fate of the Red Planet. You are a Technomancer, a formidable warrior harnessing **destructive electrical powers**. Embark on a perilous journey across a planet torn apart by conflict and infested with mutant creatures.  
Travel with your companions, choosing between diplomacy, combat or trickery to resolve quests. Gain experience to level up your character, and learn new skills or upgrade perks across 4 unique skill trees. Loot, buy and craft more powerful equipment and weaponry for yourself and teammates, to stand a chance of surviving!  
Only you can forge the destiny of Mars.  
*   An adventure set on the terraformed deserts of a **post-apocalyptic Red Planet**  
*   **Three combat styles** with deep character customization  
*   Unleash **powerful Technomancy abilities** on your foes  
*   **In-depth crafting** changes the appearance and stats of weapons and armour  
*   A world that **reacts to your decisions**  
*   Relationships with your companions open **new pathways and quests**

Release date: 28 Jun, 2016

Categories: RPG, Single-player Story, Real-time Combat, Character Progression, Crafting, Choice-based Narrative, AI Companion System, Exploration


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Impressive visuals and atmosphere (weight 0.67): The game's visuals, including graphics, level design, and art style, are generally well-received, creating a strong sense of atmosphere and immersion. The environments are often described as beautiful, detailed, and well-crafted, enhancing the overall player experience. Some reviewers noted the graphics were great even by today's standards.
- Improved over previous titles (weight 0.19): The game shows significant improvements over previous titles from the same developer, particularly Mars: War Logs, in areas such as graphics, combat, writing, and technical performance. The voice acting is also noted as being much improved. The game retains a unique charm characteristic of the developer's games.
- Well-developed and unique companions (weight 0.13): Companions are well-developed characters with unique personalities, backstories, and combat styles, influencing the player's attributes and participating in dialogues. Their quests are engaging and emotionally impactful, adding depth to the overall experience. Many reviewers found the companion quests to be among the best in the game.
- Meaningful choices and consequences (weight 0.11): Player choices have meaningful consequences, impacting the narrative, storylines, and the game's ending. The game offers different endings based on decisions made throughout the story, with choices influencing relationships with factions and companions. The romance system is clear and features plot-relevant characters.
- Intuitive and useful crafting system (weight 0.1): The game features a crafting system that allows players to gather, disassemble, and create items, with gear upgrades visually represented on the character model. The equipment system offers unique bonuses to skills, adding an RPG element and making item progression worthwhile. The crafting system is intuitive and complete.
- Similar to Mass Effect/BioWare RPGs (weight 0.05): The game's structure and systems are similar to those found in Mass Effect, Greedfall, and other BioWare-style RPGs. The game evokes a feeling reminiscent of playing the original Mass Effect or KOTOR games. The game offers a lengthy RPG experience at a reasonable price.
- Enjoyable and challenging boss fights (weight 0.04): Boss fights are enjoyable and challenging, though some human bosses are easily stunned. Giant boss fights are a highlight of the game. The game offers an easy difficulty where almost every mob can be stun-locked, allowing players to focus on the story.

Common complaints:
- Excessive backtracking, repetitive environments (weight 0.94): The game world suffers from excessive backtracking due to the lack of fast travel, repetitive level design, and constant enemy respawns. This combination makes exploration tedious and artificially inflates the game's length, especially when completing side quests.
- Bland story, characters, dialogue (weight 0.9): The game's story, characters, and dialogue are often described as bland, generic, and uninspired.  Voice acting is inconsistent, and character interactions lack depth, leading to a lack of emotional investment in the narrative.
- Repetitive, clunky, unbalanced combat (weight 0.85): The combat system is criticized for being repetitive, clunky, and unbalanced, with limited attack options and poor enemy AI.  Enemies respawn frequently and can overwhelm the player, while some can attack from off-screen, leading to frustrating encounters.
- Frequent crashes, compatibility issues (weight 0.24): The game suffers from technical issues, including frequent crashes, freezing, and incompatibility with modern multi-core processors.  Some players are unable to launch the game at all, and the developers have not adequately addressed these problems.
- Repetitive, uninspired quests (weight 0.15): Quests are often repetitive fetch quests with little impact on the world, and the game lacks transparency in its mechanics.  The absence of fast travel exacerbates the tedium of traversing the same areas repeatedly.
- Poor, repetitive soundtrack (weight 0.06): The game's music is often described as terrible, monotonous, and inappropriate for the on-screen action.  The soundtrack's quality is inconsistent, with some tracks being grating and disconnected from the gameplay.
- Rushed, unsatisfying ending (weight 0.06): The story and narrative feel rushed towards the end, with an abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion. The ending lacks closure and fails to provide a sense of resolution for the player's efforts.
- Pointless karma system (weight 0.04): The karma system is poorly implemented and has little to no meaningful impact on the game world or character interactions.  Choices lack consequences, and the system feels inconsequential.
- Confusing, poorly designed maps (weight 0.04): The game's map layouts are confusing and poorly designed, making navigation frustrating.  The lack of a compass and indicators for climbable areas further exacerbates the problem.
- Uneven difficulty, weak character (weight 0.04): The game has an uneven difficulty curve, with a slow and frustrating start followed by a spike in difficulty. The main character is also very weak, leading to frustration.
- Uninspired sequel, empty world (weight 0.04): The game feels like a low-effort sequel to Mars: War Logs, with minimal improvements and a weaker plot. The open world feels empty and devoid of detail, making it less engaging than its predecessor.

Gameplay feedback:
- Engaging companions and story (weight 0.17): Players can recruit companions with unique designs, personal quests, and dialogue. Companions contribute to the story, react to player decisions, and provide stat boosts, enhancing strategic party composition. The player character is often a Technomancer with electrical abilities.
- Standard RPG progression systems (weight 0.15): The game incorporates standard RPG elements such as character attributes, skills, leveling, loot, and crafting systems. Players can customize their character's skills and upgrade equipment, but some reviewers found the impact of these upgrades underwhelming.
- Meaningful choices and consequences (weight 0.09): The game features quest chains with branching dialogues and choices that have consequences, influencing the story and companion relationships. There are multiple endings, adding replay value, but the main story may lead to the same conclusion regardless of choices.
- Exploration similar to BioWare games (weight 0.07): The game's exploration and RPG elements are similar to Mass Effect and other BioWare titles, with a semi-open world design. The map is structured in corridors, and a transparent map overlay is available while moving.
- Repetitive level design/enemies (weight 0.03): The game reuses areas for new missions, and humanoid enemies have limited movesets, leading to repetitive gameplay. Additionally, some reviewers felt that the skill trees lacked impact on character strength or gameplay experience.
- Dodging is essential for survival (weight 0.02): Dodging is essential for survival, especially on higher difficulties where enemies can kill you quickly. However, some reviewers felt that the i-frames on dodges were abused by enemies.

Performance notes:
- Inconsistent technical performance reported (weight 0.2): The game's technical performance is inconsistent. Some players experience crashes, frame rate drops, and optimization issues, especially on multi-core systems, while others report smooth performance even on older hardware. Developers are reportedly working on fixing bugs.
- Tutorial progression issues (weight 0.02): Some players have encountered issues with the combat tutorials, particularly when remapping keys or using specific input devices like roller-ball mice, making it impossible to progress.
- Enemy animation issues (weight 0.01): Enemy animations sometimes fail to properly react to disruptions or stuns, which can detract from the combat experience.
- Getting stuck on environment (weight 0.01): Players and NPCs can get stuck on rocks, causing frustration and disrupting gameplay.
- Scripted enemy behavior (weight 0.01): Enemy behavior is heavily scripted, allowing players to reset encounters by running to specific locations, which can be exploited.
- Weak English voice acting (weight 0.01): While the soundtrack is acceptable, the English voice acting is sometimes of poor quality, which detracts from the overall experience.
- Invisible walls present (weight 0.01): Invisible walls exist in areas where the player is not intended to go, which can be immersion-breaking.
- Minor map pointer bug (weight 0.01): A small number of players have experienced minor bugs, such as map pointers not disappearing when they should.

Recommendations:
- Decent, flawed RPG experience (weight 0.66): The game is seen as a decent but flawed RPG experience, often compared to titles like "Greedfall", "Mass Effect", or older Bioware games. Reviewers suggest that players who enjoy story-driven RPGs and can overlook technical or gameplay issues may find it enjoyable. However, it's not considered a must-play title or a game-of-the-year contender.
- Buy on sale due to flaws (weight 0.5): Many reviewers suggest purchasing the game only on sale due to its numerous flaws and budget limitations. The game is considered worth playing at a reduced price, but not at full price. Some reviewers recommend waiting for a deep discount or special promotion before buying.
- Mixed ratings, generally mediocre (weight 0.47): The game receives mixed ratings, generally around a 6.5 or 7 out of 10. While some reviewers find the story and characters enjoyable, others consider the game mediocre or just 'okay'. This suggests an uneven experience with both positive and negative aspects.
- Compared to "Mars: War Logs" (weight 0.08): The game is frequently compared to the developer's previous title, "Mars: War Logs." Some reviewers recommend playing "Mars: War Logs" first to understand the universe, while others consider this game an improvement over its predecessor. However, some reviewers feel that it is a step backward.
- Game-breaking glitches on modern systems (weight 0.06): Several reviewers report game-breaking glitches and incompatibility issues, particularly on modern systems with multi-core processors. These technical problems render the game unplayable for some users, leading to refund requests and strong recommendations against purchasing it until these issues are resolved. This may be a case of review bombing.
- Mixed feelings about developer (weight 0.04): Reviewers express mixed feelings about the developer, Spiders. Some are eager for future games and appreciate their ambition, while others are hesitant due to past experiences with game-breaking bugs. There is a sense that the studio has potential but needs to improve the quality and polish of their games.
- Game needed more development time (weight 0.02): Several reviews suggest that the game needed more development time, indicating that the developers may have been overwhelmed by the scope of the project. This lack of polish and refinement contributes to the game's various flaws and shortcomings. The game feels unfinished.
- Interesting combat, boring world (weight 0.02): The combat system has interesting elements, but the boring world diminishes enjoyment. The core mechanics of combat are engaging, but the overall experience is lacking due to the uninspired and repetitive environments. The combat is not enough to carry the game.

Other player notes:
- Mars setting, shares universe (weight 0.12): The game is set on Mars and shares universe with "Mars War Logs", taking place roughly at the same time but from a different perspective. The story explores corporate conflict, resource scarcity, and the secrets of the Technomancers.
- AA title, feels incomplete (weight 0.05): The game feels like a AA title, falling between AAA and indie games. It offers a little bit of everything, but nothing complete, feeling 'cheap' in many areas.
- Play as Zachariah Mancer (weight 0.05): Players control Zachariah Mancer, a newly graduated Technomancer cadet with electrical powers. The game features a defined male protagonist, limiting character creation options.
- Story is uninteresting, unevenly paced (weight 0.04): The story suffers from uninteresting dialogue, underdeveloped characters and uneven pacing. While the reviewer was initially curious, the payoff was ultimately disappointing.
- Decent, but not top-notch (weight 0.04): The game's visuals, voice acting, and animations are decent but not top-notch. The overall presentation is comparable to other Spiders' titles like Mars War Logs and Bound by Flame.
- Wait for deep sale (weight 0.04): Some reviewers suggest waiting for a deeper sale, as the game frequently goes on sale for around $1. This may indicate concerns about the game's value at full price.
- CPU core issue, fix blocked (weight 0.01): There are reports of a CPU core issue, with a fix available but blocked from release by the publisher. This could impact performance for some players.
- Healing items sometimes disappear (weight 0.01): Players report that healing items sometimes disappear for unknown reasons. This may be related to using them while poisoned or knocked down.
- Superficial companion attitudes (weight 0.01): Companions have attitude indicators, but they are mostly superficial. This suggests a lack of meaningful impact on gameplay or story.

Emotions:
No emotions}