I recently finished the Hairbrained studios trilogy, which I highly endorse.

A thought that struck me was how much they nerfed magic relative to the Tabletop. Especially summoning. Of course they also removed most of the spells, but I appreciate it would be challenging to code things beyond simple damage, buff, and heal effects.

Then it occured to me that they did the same in the old Sega and NES games (which were amazing games for their time).

There were a couple online only games I missed in between, and a mega cd game. I'm curious if nerfing magic is ubiquitous/ inevitable in shadowrun video games, and if that perhaps speaks to game balance overall.

The Harebrained games are mostly tactical RPGs composed of set pieces that don't differ significantly between playthroughs.

In the tabletop game, a lot of the power of magic comes from its potential to resolve things outside of combat. That's difficult to replicate in a video game, although some AAA titles (like Baldur's Gate 3) are starting to expand the limits of what's possible.

Until we have generative AI running games for us as a hyper-flexible GM that can go off the rails in any direction, I think most video games will default to using magic only in combat situations since those are the most straightforward to code, and the easiest to balance multiple archetypes around.