The Technomancer Review: Ambition Vs. Execution

Rating: ˜…˜…˜…˜†˜†★★★☆☆Length: Approx. 45 hours (Main story, minimal side-quests).Platform & Performance: Xbox One - Solid 30fps frame rate, no bugs or glitches.

At every turn of Spider Studios' The Technomancer, you can see a truly phenomenal game struggling to break free. You see it in some of the armour and weapon designs, in the multi-faceted combat mechanics, in the mythology of the titular technomancers themselves. But at every turn, especially in the early-going when it really needs to make a good impression, it stumbles. Quite badly at times, too.

That said, I'm all for a developer going all-out to bring their vision to life, and it's this underlying sense of heart, passion and genuine creativity, that saves the entire project.

The Technomancer casts you as Zacharia Mancer, one of many titular technomancers, gifted individuals who have evolved to conjure up a number of electricity-based attacks, as will as the ability to drain their enemies of Serum - a form of currency. Technomancers exist as guardians of the various human colonies on a terraformed Mars, yet they withhold a secret that if exposed, could break and tarnish their standing in society.

In addition, the various corporations that have emerged are now inextricably linked to a scarce availability of water. Hierarchies are formed, with you and your kin's existence now but a quasi-religious linchpin, holding it all together. It’s a killer concept, and one that provides a lot of glue for the weaker parts of the game to still feel cohesive.

Combat is by far the highlight, but even that will thoroughly infuriate as you’re forced to learn the hard way. See, although it’s a Dark Souls-influenced, strategy-heavy affair (Spiders’ last game was Bound by Flame), the God of War-style distanced camera encourages you to wade in and mix it up with enemies, not realising that your health will go down in seconds should they get any hits in. Think The Witcher 3 with none of the enemy tells or deftness when it comes to defensive play, and you're pretty much there.

A trio of stances sit alongside the dropping of traps and your natural mage-like techomancing abilities, meaning you'll always have access to a number of things like an electric-powered punch, Palpatine-esque forked-lightning and even a super-wide ground surge.

The aforementioned trio splits your stance into Warrior (pole-wielding area-attacks with a need for constant dodging), Rogue (a poison knife and gun combo, allowing for distanced combat and stick n' move battles of wearing opponents down slowly), and Guardian (mace n'shield combo, and the only stance you can block and counter in).

You can swap between them on the fly, and that last one is key, because it's here where The Technomancer makes a VERY bold choice. It strives to break away from genre-leader Dark Souls by restricting what would usually be a standard move, instead making it a stance-exclusive ability, giving combat a tactile and considered edge.

Now you have to learn how to swap between all your available moves to stay alive, and that's both refreshing and encouraging to see. Once you do, you'll be cartwheeling into the centre of danger, dropping an explosive trap, rolling back out, whipping out a gun to pop a few rounds into some more distant enemies, watching the explosion go off and electro-punching any remaining stragglers.

It's here, and only here, where The Technomancer truly does something mechanically unique, and I'm making such a big point of it, because I truly reinforce the fact that if this combat model doesn't sound like your kind of thing, there'll be nothing to keep you here for the longterm.

And why? Because although the on-paper premise is incredibly solid, the execution of your Logan's Run-meets-Mad Max story is really quite terrible. Voice acting especially is all over the place, seeing a number of key character deaths and emotional deliveries read like a badly-dubbed cop drama.

It’s the sort of ‘textbook American’ accent and "I'm a gruff badass" characterisation that many older European developers tend to shoot for. This tonality was evident in many games from the 2000s, where overseas studios would focus on indulging in corny Westernised tropes, forever seen through a wide-eyed, European lens. It's not offensively bad like Ride to Hell: Retribution, but more Heavy Rain, and the now-infamous “JAY-son” scene.

In addition, characters are introduced under the proviso that you’ll manually seek out side missions and read optional text entries to establish their backstory and motives, yet only moments later they’ll be talking as if you’ve known them for years.

I had one particular beat where a female character was introduced mid-mission, disappearing as the game popped up and said "You can go and see her if you want", only to then show up in a pivotal cutscene, spouting informed dialogue about my motivations and helping with some incredibly momentous actions, despite not having ANY conversations with me beforehand.

Moments like this happen all the time. You can tell Spiders wanted to craft a world of characters that could all be your best friend or most reliable companion, yet in having it be so free-form, when the central narrative needs to lurch forward, every requisite part of the puzzle does so too, whether you've done the requisite groundwork or not.

Lastly in the negative column, general facial animation stutters and warps between several mouth shapes far too fast. It reminded me of the South Park episode where the gang attempt to animate a cartoon of themselves using a different lip configuration for every single letter in a given word.

Such a thing wouldn't be a problem if Spiders hadn't put such a focus on these dialogue exchanges, but with a lack of randomly-generated gesticulations and character animations to accompany it like in The Witcher 3, they end up standing there for quite some time, the only thing keeping your attention being their forever-flailing lips.

Back to the good stuff, and it's the character progression trees. As you batter guards and the beasts of Mars on your travels, you'll level up and unlock new abilities, alongside the option to craft better armour and weapons.

You can only equip certain pieces after you've hit a particular cap on a given tree (Strength, Agility etc.) so thought must be put into how you're going to upgrade, if you really want to wear the good stuff. All enemies drop either currency or items, vendors are plentiful and there's always a crafting table nearby to bolt something onto an existing weapon.

And it's here too, that outside its narrative, The Technomancer shines. There are seemingly thousands of customisation options for you and your squad (like Mass Effect you'll travel with a team of two, though for all the pre-release trailers talked of companion interactions, it extends to talking and helping you kill things directly). You may not have any tag-team moves or gameplay reasons to invest in someone like Phobos' the Mutant's best interests, but you can dress him up real nice and give him a stupidly powerful club, and he'll batter your foes into next week if given half the chance.

In the end, The Technomancer has been put together by a great team of designers and coders, positively loaded with ambition and cool ideas - it's just a shame they're forever hampered by a middling execution.

It creates a game you’ll want to love, and you can easily see what Spider Studios were going for. Ultimately, though, for me The Technomancer falls short of its incredibly awesome premise – though, that said, many will still find a ton of fun, simply because of how slick and Matrix-cool its concept truly is.

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Are you planning on picking up The Technomancer? Let me know what you think, and if you have any other questions, shout 'em out in the comments!