Premise: Taking place in a familiar, vaguely dystopian cyberpunk city called “Harbor Prime”, you'll play as a character named Dex. Who Dex specifically is remians a bit of a mystery going in — however, the general introduction is such that you're being chased by what appears to be some sort of authority and then a hacker, named 'Raycast', intercedes and tells you to run away after helping you jam the door. Shortly later in the introduction — [spoiler]upon arriving at 'Fixer's Hope'. You'll meet Decker, a man that Raycast trusts. It's then revealed that the people chasing you are named 'The Complex'. They want you dead. Raycast's explanation for interceding is that you, Dex, are a “seed” of Kether — Kether is an AI that oversees the entire network throughout Harbor Prime.[/spoiler] Beyond this, the game leaves you to explore.
On its face, Dex is an SNES styled 2D, beat 'em up with RPG elements with some twin stick shooter aspects. Namely in the hacking mini-game or if you level in ranged combat. But it's got a fair bit going on behind the scenes.
Arriving at Fixer's Hope.
Getting to Fixer's Hope acts as the prologue as well as the tutorial. I've had this game in my backlog for some time and that's largely because I had heard reports about undue difficulty and saving problems. The combat can be brutal. And if I recall correctly, the game didn't allow manual saving, only auto-saving between screens — and because the combat can be down right brutal at times, it makes sense why people were pushed away. Thankfully, that is no longer the case and you can save at any time outside of active combat.
”I never asked for this.” — Adam Jensen
The process of getting to Fixer's Hope attempts to set up the mechanics in how you'll play the rest of the game. It has you face a gate that impedes the main objective, which again, is to get to “Fixer's Hope” — through exploration you'll find you can either pick the lock, beat up or convince the guy who has the key [through dialogue] to give it to you or you could complete a quest for him involving some C4 and a bridge to win his favor. It all depends on how you level, how much you explore and how you want to play.
As the game is very open-ended and doesn't tell you where you need to go — it's got an “old school” quest system. There are no way points. You'll need to actually read the log to figure out where to go. But you can fast travel at any time.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2445443983
Leveling into melee for example allows you to increase the number of hits in your combo as well as perform other moves like a leg sweep, handy for knocking people over when charging power strikes. I played it with a gamepad given the nature of the game. You're able to roll with the right analog stick to avoid unblockable strikes as well. Otherwise the gunplay acts how you'd expect a 2D, side scrolling twin stick shooter to behave.
Hacking in C-space controls as a twin-stick shooter. You can activate it anytime, though outside of a computer it's technically Augmented Reality. Which levels separately from hacking. It can be used as scouting tool, but primarily used to hack things in the environment such as cameras and turrets.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2445439706
Dying in C-space won't kill Dex. However, you'll suffer 50HP from “Brain Damage”. You can then recover a small amount of focus (which is health inside of C-space) before jacking back in. I found this knowledge made me less fearful for trying to “brute force” a lot hacks. Any damage done to nodes will persist as well. Neurostims can be used to heal focus.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2445439675
There are a few focus refilling machines throughout the game as well. Later on, once you've got your Neuroweave, you can buy and use augments. This is a cyberpunk game after all — often these will be used to supplement things you haven't leveled into naturally with XP. There's even a re-breather like Deus Ex.
Replayability?
It has some. There are certainly some side quests that are missable without a guide if you're only going to play through once. There are also multiple endings but... [spoiler]the cut-scenes are relatively short and provide no real epilogue or denouement. They're a bit unfulfilling compared to the rest of the game.[/spoiler]
The Gist:
Dex may have fared better had it not have had a poor initial reception, at least to my memory. Many of those issues are gone now. It's quite a well-told story with a lot of interesting side quests and variation. Though I do find the introduction a tad on the non-welcoming side. All of the dialogue is voice acted and is done pretty well in most cases. I believe the studio is in Prague.
I like the art-style and the world that's built. Many of the characters and side quests are quite interesting. The main quest is kind of traditional for the most part but the supporting cast mixed with the different ways to accomplish tasks make for a great time.
Zitat:
If you've read this far, consider following my curation —
Station Argus
Plus it runs essentially on a potato. Which I really like. My PC is no slouch, I just feel like it lends a certain magic to a game — makes it feel like a tiny pocket-dimension on top of making it available for more people to play.
