For those who just want to relive the isometric action of the SNES and Megadrive days, Shadowrun Returns easily delivers. It's not the deepest or most flexible game of its type, but there's a lot to be said for simple ideas realised intuitively. Add in some excellent writing and, judged purely as a standalone game, it's an unambiguous success.

There's more to Shadowrun Returns though. Much more. And it won't be until the community gets its hands on the editor, starts remixing the current material and generating its own, that the game will really begin to blossom. When it does, the patience of the hardcore will be well rewarded.

The lack of healing options shines a particularly unforgiving light on Shadowrun Returns' save system. During combat sequences — which can often stretch for as long as 15-20 minutes of turn-based life or death — it's game over if your character goes down, which throws you back to the last autosave. There's no manual saving in Shadowrun Returns anywhere in the game, whether you're in combat or back home. More than once I spent twenty or thirty minutes between missions tweaking my character, talking to NPCs gathering information and generally preparing myself for the next step only to realize that I couldn't save. It's a weird "screw you" to the idea of experimentation in almost every area of the game, because experimenting could cost you half an hour or more of time as you try to roll back the changes you made. It's a bizarre, borderline-unacceptable omission in 2013.