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In fairness, you get an extra nuyen at the start of the game and skip the first two crossfire events, but that doesn't seem like it's enough to offset the extra difficulty. It's not until scene 3 that there's any significant boost in bounty rewards, but by then it's usually too late. Sure, you get a bigger percentage of each obstacle's bounty, but this averages out for no net gain in scene 1, and only a negligible increase in scene 2. So you're facing more obstacles (per player) than you would in a four player game, and yet you only have half as many cards to play each round, with less diversity in each deck since you're missing two entire roles. In the third scene of the standard "Crossfire" mission, you face obstacles equal to "the number of runners +2," meaning in a two-runner game, each runner will face two obstacles (a 100% increase from the start of the game), whereas in a four-runner game, only two players face double obstacles (a 50% increase). The rules change slightly when playing with 2-3, giving players a bit of an advantage because the game gets harder with fewer runners. Although the box claims it to be a 1-4 player game, Shadowrun: Crossfire was clearly intended to be a four-player game, since that's how the rules are written by default. (1) The game does not scale well based on player count. I'm updating this review to include a couple of thoughts/observations that I neglected to mention originally: Given the choice between this and any other game on my shelf, we'd rather play virtually anything else. It's tense, but it's not exciting it's difficult, but it's not satisfying it's cooperative, but only under heavy restriction there's progression, but it's not rewarding it's got a cool theme, but it doesn't shine through the mechanics there's some fun depth in the strategy, but it's almost nullified by random luck. I like everything about this game, at least in theory, but it just doesn't do it for me in practice. Shadowrun: Crossfire is a game I would enjoy playing regularly for the potential character progression, and also for the sake of the challenge, but none of my friends (or I) are masochistic enough to stick with the game. Of the three missions, only one of them is actually designed to be playable for new players, since the others require a certain number of upgrades to be even remotely feasible, which means you have to run the basic "Crossfire" mission roughly 10-20 times before you'll be able to reliably tackle "Extraction," and then you have to run that mission God knows how many times before you can even think about taking on "Dragon Fight." And with the game's absurd difficulty, it's going to take you 5-10 mission attempts before you can even get your first upgrade, making the game's most novel concept inaccessible to brand new players, since only the determined, hardcore players will stick around long enough to get that far. This is what really drew me to the game initially, but the limited number of missions out of the box makes the whole game feel incredibly grindy. The game's most distinguishing feature is its RPG-style leveling system, with players creating their own characters who gain experience and level up over multiple playthroughs, allowing you to choose from a wide array of permanent upgrades as you gain karma. Specter Ops, for instance, gives you exactly one page of propaganda to set the tone for its world, and that's all you need to jump in and start enjoying its theme. It's nice that the game comes with a 26-page booklet (and a few chapters from a novel) that you can read to familiarize yourself with the specific details of the Shadowrun universe, but I shouldn't need a 26-page booklet to immerse myself in the setting. In essence, the Shadowrun theme doesn't come across at all (despite the brilliant artwork) unless you commit a lot of effort filling in the blanks yourself and deliberately role-playing your characters. When an obstacle spawns in front of you, it doesn't actually feel like you're battling an ork bounty hunter because you're really just matching abstract symbols to move a token across a card. None of the missions give you any kind of narrative setup for what's going on before, during, or afterwards - they just dump you straight into arbitrary objectives. This lack of theme in the deck-building extends to virtually every other aspect of the game as well.
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