Shadowrun Hong Kong - Extended Edition

Dragonfall is probably one of the best rpgs ever made so comparing Hong Kong to it is maybe not fair but hell the same company made it. Long story short the game mechanics are the same and even improved, the quest design is improved as well but essentially everything is similar and familiar. It sounds good right? If you wanted to play more Shadowrun after Dragonfall, Hong Kong delivers at least in paper. There is one big problem though. The essence of these games are not the gameplay but the story and the writing and exactly here the devs failed miserably. I'm not finished yet but the pacing of the story is terrible, and the plot doesn't seem to be too interesting. The companions were better in Dragonfall as well. On the top of that the game is even more writing and dialogue heavy than the previous iteration and if we add that it has an unintersting story and characters it totally destroys the game. I haven't give up yet, but already skipping dialogues which is a bad sign in a game like this, I don't know if you want to try a Shadowrun game, try Dragonfall because that is a very good game, a future classic of rpgs. With Hong Kong the devs missed the mark though.

As someone with a decent amount of tabletop experience, I was used to the idea of Action Points and the concept of action economy. But, Shadowrun: Hong Kong doesn't quite do the best job of explaining how the core systems work, and the lack of a solid tutorial left me needing to scrap my first playthrough, Pros -Fun -Engaging story -Interesting combat -Interesting world Cons -No tutorial -A bit clunky -Poor explanation of stats -The Matrix

Liked the upgrades you could give team members when they leveled up. Liked being able to follow dialogue paths to get new information and open up the best ending. Talking to Team members and other NPCs after each mission is essential to unlock things, Load times especially with a large number of saves takes too long though. Liked the extended missions after the main game is beat. Story was good. Epilogue was there and alright as well. Different ways to customize character were well implemented.

The story starts out with a great Shadowrun tone, but loses it in the middle. It strives to bring it back at the end, but the feeling of hopelessness is not easily re-achieved. There is a hacking mini-game, that while fun, is timer based. I haven't checked if in mods it can be turned off, but I hope it can. The advantage of a turn-based game is it can be very inclusive of its player base (if you have reading problems you have all the time in the world to read whatever you need to..or if you are missing a hand going from keyboard to mouse for a FPS definitely raises the difficulty level). Hacking should be character-based like strength is, and basing it off player skill makes having a balanced adventure tougher to design. Overall, pretty much like the other two games-very good.

i do enjoy big add for NON-COMBAT missions as pacifist, but i can kill you with 1 fist strongly approve game is STINGY, i never feelt so lacking founds as in this game brand new addon: Cyberware affinity in all 7 levels have around 20 bonuses in comparition Sword in 8 levels have 5 bonuses... Changes to decking are frustrating and too hard, i would just like it to be skip button i hate minigames in games, here i can't even move forward before i kill room of guards All 3 shadowrun games are best cyberpunk video games you can find and this one has most polished UI and a lot of efforts i really enjoyed my time with the game and yes i don't like some of the changes from dragonfall but game is still very cool, some of the changes are for the better and game feel unique i appreciate addon of developer commentary location design is top notch this release have one of the most memorable locations i like dance party, Prosperity tower, deckcon event rat ship game feels shorter than dragonfall, but it might be for non-combat skips game allows to take decking here is a chore, if you get it on sneak pass cool, you can get good at it, but i seriously just wanna skip at this point, decker was always most useless build used exclusively for paid data... i finished the game killed final boss 3 times in a row last fight was 1v1 otk generally speaking game punish experimentation and spending money buy katana for your build? fool there is a sword for free that is better magical katana... and you have only 1200 to buy chi-casting 6 spell i never had problems with money in dragonfall, i wasn't super rich, but could buy armor/weapon for 1 run and sell it later without feeling like im out of money Game load longer and works slower than dragonfall and i dont like it saving cause game to stutter every event seems to load with like game having delay on it and difficulty goes down from the impossible early fights to OTK final boss Dialogues and etiquette no longer play as important role