Oi Chummers,

This UGC is an absolute masterpiece. Also the hardest UGC on hard difficulty out there - if you don't build a killing machine as the PC stick to the lower difficulty. HBS should've hired Cirion to keep making these UGCs and selling them as 5$ extensions as this is on par with Hong Kong if not better.

Few games have touched me on an emotional level like the mid game twist here. Every character is very distinct and well written along with having great inter-NPC interactions. A lot of time and care is spent to examine justifications of violence from different perspectives which is facilitated by your party member's different histories. The dialogue choices are some of the best I've seen in any RPG. Cirion puts the entirety of Bioware to shame with appropriately humorous, vicious, and compassionate response choices. The campaign does a good job at respecting the decisions you make throughout.

There are many interesting parallels between the Humanis/Saito relation and the modern Neo-Nazi/Trump equivalent (if you believe that Trump supports white nationalism.) Humanis, while being a real threat to Meta-Humans were benign in comparison to the terror they wielded when supported by an authoritarian dictator. Clearly there is a massive difference in scale and reality, but this overall theme made the entire campaign feel incredibly relevant to current social issues (which Shadowrun leans itself to always.) However no message is forced down your throat, everything feels organic, and you get to wade through the philosophy with your party at a pace that gives justice to the depth of these conflicts.

Gameplay wise, there are a few extremely difficult sections that even with a good team will require some save scumming. This gives a nice sense of accomplishment for beating an encounter. After passing the brutal trial for the third action point the game gets much easier (or it did for my cyber razor sammy). It felt like I never had enough credits, which probably meant it was the right amount to give out. On top of the custom skill trees for the companions there are also some scattered unique weapons that were a surprise, to be sure - but a welcome one. And it has a dog.

I sincerely hope Cirion continues to make UGC as HBS will be out of the game for a while with BattleTech, leaving him the only hope for the SR fix.

9.99999/10 for breaking my heart