Shadowrun Hong Kong - Extended Edition

I read some of the reviews for this game before I played it and it gave me the impression that this was a step down from Dragonfall, but it really isn't. Mechanically, there have been improvements that are very welcome. Having played through it, including the epilogue campaign, I have no idea what there would be to not like. You're thrust ass-forward into the shadows due to a mystery involving your foster father. The characters, locations and plot have all the charm of the previous game and then some. Even in brief interactions with NPCs it doesn't feel like time wasted. The plot is fairly complex and it gets you invested. Though one thing that bothered me was Duncan. Throughout the story he feels like a sour note on the fun you're having as a shadowrunner. As a character, he's well-written, but his disdain for what you're both going through is apparent and doesn't change right up until the end. The rest of the main cast is a delight however, and the only thing that pissed me off is the game doesn't offer you the option to romance any of them. I loved my team of shadowrunners and would gladly have gotten together with any of them. I played through the bonus campaign as well, which acts as a sort of epilogue which deals with some of the unresolved threads of the main story. The ending is somewhat disappointing however. I won't spoil too much but basically, you get presented with two choices and throughout the bonus campaign you have little to no opportunity to influence the outcome of either in the way you do in the main story. You have to choose between the team of characters you've spent the entire game with and Duncan. He is again, a sour note with a grim determination to hate his time spent with the rest of you and if you cared for him at all there's no option to have a middle ground that would make your whole team happy.

The characters are unbelieveably emo (and I use the word "unbelieveable" in the literal sense). There is an improbable level of diversity in the diversity, cuz I guess they heard we like diversity, dawg, and the dialog options for the player character range from cringe to downright painful. This game was not a joy to play.

Required text

just play it

In the beginning, at least. I'm about three hours in and it's been almost all dialogue with about three fights and some shopping. The original Shadowrun Returns was amazing. It was a good mix of action and talking built on a solid engine that really didn't show us what it was capable of until Dragonfall. The Dragonfall campaign was a significant improvement over Dead Man's Switch (the original SR campaign), largely due to the fact that it made you (made me, anyway) care about many of the NPCs and gave you a full crew (and then some) to run with and fall in love with. Hong Kong is (in my opinion) a middle ground in just about every respect. I've yet to fall in love with the full cast but they seem very well fleshed-out. The game (the beginning of it at least) is really a lot to read through and I'm dreading doing it a second time. I'm really hoping it turns into more of what I loved about Dragonfall and (to a lesser extent) Dead Man's Switch. I suspect that it will and I hope I remember to update this review when it does.