I don't get the praise for Dragonfall's story, to be honest. It's OK and well communicated, the party banter is mediocre and the backstories for the companions isn't anything special either.
I also don't see how it's that much less linear than Shadowrun Returns' campaign. Throwing in some side-missions like the lodge and companion quests doesn't make it less linear to me. You're trapped in the same mission-hub just like in the first game.
The setting and atmosphere are awesome though, but I preferred the first game in that regard. Berlin and the Kreuzbasar didn't do anything for me, I didn't really care about it or it's inhabitants at any point in the game.
Tactical combat is atrocious, the AI is dumb as a rock and the AP are so limited it's hard to do anything fun during most of the game. It becomes incredibly repetitive and isn't really challenging.
The dialogue is pretty good, but too often choosing what to say is a false choice and every option will lead to the same line from the other person and the same set of options at the next prompt. I don't mind lots of text, and there is a lot of text in here, but I do mind when all that text doesn't really go anywhere, and I feel that sometimes that's the case in the first two Shadowruns, it's sometimes just a lot of empty words. Using skills or attributes in dialogue mainly lets you skip one room of combat or get some extra money.
Money is well balanced, you can't buy all the best gear right away and you'll have to make decisions what you want to focus on first, I applaud them for this since it's very rare in RPGs to not have a totally broken economy after just a few hours of gameplay.
