The Technomancer

I suppose there's no reason to play The Technomancer if you want to just play the best game (so far) by Spiders; GreedFall is better in about every way. The only thing that The Technomancer has going for it over the latter game is perhaps its scifi setting over fantasy but even that's not that interesting. The coolest part was left for the ending to raise questions that then never get answers.

The step before GreedFall

The game's setting is indeed the same as in Mars: War Logs but the story is not a continuation in either direction. From what I could tell, the games happen more or less concurrently. There's a character in Technomancer who leaves after some story progression and then appears in War Logs. That's pretty much the only direct connection they have.

In The Technomancer you play as Zachariah, a young technomancer. It's somewhat disappointing there's no choice for the protagonist's gender like in Spiders' previous and following games. I reckon that with a more gender neutral name, it would have been really easy, barely an inconvenience. But I guess they saved one voice actor's wage in their budget.

A technomancer is someone who can channel electricity: essentially you're a lightning mage. In addition to lightning powers, you can specialize into warrior, rogue, and guardian skills. I chose rogue since its fast style seemed fun. Warrior is the tanking skill tree and guardian is for using a staff, I guess for crowd control and area damage.

The gameplay, including perks and talents, is nearly identical to GreedFall though not quite as fun. I was playing on the hardest difficulty for Steam achievement purposes but didn't find the game as difficult as Bound by Flame was. Death certainly did come quickly if I stopped paying attention and some non-human enemies were a bit annoying to deal with due to the their damage output being so high thanks to the difficulty. Companions -- this time two with you at once -- are as useless as they are in Spiders' previous titles.

The karma system from Mars: War Logs returns in The Technomancer but again there's no much benefit to kill unconscious humanoids for their serum. I at least ran through the same areas and killed the same respawned enemies so many times that the lack of currency was never a problem. I think backtracking is one of the big problems in all of Spiders' games. It tends to make their games feel tedious and padded. Just make shorter games if you don't have the means to make the content diverse enough to stay interesting.

I also noticed that stores have a buy and "sale" (instead of sell) tabs like in GreedFall. English localization needs work too.

Currently Spiders is working on their next game, Steelrising, which seems pretty cool based on the trailer, the setting close to GreedFall's. The studio has also been acquired by Nacon (previously Bigben Interactive). I wonder how that will affect the quality of their games. For the better, I hope.