Shadowrun Hong Kong - Extended Edition

I did not expect much, but I was overwhelmed. Great, long and complex RPG without being chaotic or confusing in "what is the player supposed to do". Do you handle the guns well? Or do you prefer melee? Do you project your consciousness into the matrix or do you let your drones do your hard work for you? Or do you leave the world of cold steel and silicone behind you and sling magical energies and summon guardians? Choose your path... There are 3 games, so my 2 cents to each one of them: Shadowrun Returns (Dead Man's Switch) - first game and going straight back to gritty Seattle. Weakest story of the series, but still great and enjoyable with a cyberpunk-noir ambience. Shadowrun DragonFall - takes you to Berlin and it's chaotic Flux state. When the after fall of a botched job turns into a fight for survival. Much better writing and NPC companions with and awesome mix of talking and fighting. Shadowrun Hong Kong - when the past catches up on you, you gotta set things right. Even if everyone turns out to be after you as you walk into a trap. Now, who set that trap up? And why? And - most importantly - how much do I want them to hurt when I catch them? Excellent writing in this one, yet it seems a bit more "chatty" than the other 2 games. (Still a lot of fighting tho)

I absolutely loved it. I consider it on par with the Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights games (both I happen to love playing). The strategy is fun, and very mutable. Situations generally have multiple methods of handling them. The dialog is interesting. The only negative thing I could even attempt to say about it is...there isn't another one in this series (I own Returns and Dragonfall also).

This part of the game is visually beautiful, has a pleasant oriental atmosphere and music. Unfortunately, the characters are not as interesting as in Dragonfall, and yet there is definitely more talk. Fortunately, there are several characters that are interesting to talk. Difficulty of the mission, despite the fact that it should balance itself, has problems and as a result a fully fighting character may have a problem to hit the opponents in the fight. Game is very pretty and looks interesting, but is not very balanced or polished.

The writing is fantastic, most characters are fleshed-out and have very interesting topics to discuss or leave a very strong impression; the combat has been revamped, more cyberware and weapons were added and the skill tree now freely supports more melee-focused characters, and fight locations are well constructed; the world is very immersive as before and the myths and stories Hong-Kong has to offer are very interesting to the outsider; the plot is also good - it's not fantastic but it's serviceable, I felt involved in the story and invested in most of the characters and wanted to push forward. In almost every aspect, Hong-Kong reaches the high bar set by its predecessor and then some. It's also considerably longer than both Dragon Fall and Shadowrun Returns. There are a few faults with the game, though, which I didn't find in Dragonfall: 1. The combat is far too easy for my taste - I played on Hard and almost never felt pushed or challenged. The end fights are especially disappointing in that respect. There is also not enough combat in general, to my liking, and the tons of available dialogue in-between missions makes actual missions feel short. 2. A few characters don't feel as fleshed-out as they should, in particular Is0bel (your team's decker). However, the few others you can add to your crew (Gaichu, Rachter) more than make up for it. 3. The missions are very diverse and take place in interesting locations, but (despite working for local triads) the jobs almost never put you in a morally grey area, as a Shadowrun job should; this is unlike the previous game. It's still a very, very good game, though - good enough for me to consider an immediate replay with another character build - but it's not perfect. If HareBrained Schemes keeps making these games in this caliber, I'll happily keep buying them on a yearly basis.

This game has an interesting setting (if slightly cliché at times ... well, not *that* slightly). Compared to the previous titles, the main story however is not particularly captivating (NB I haven't finished it yet, so it might be able to draw me in later, I suppose). The one thing that has changed (catastrophically) for the worse compared to the earlier games is the Matrix gameplay user experience. I like (and buy) the Shadowrun games for being good, modern, ROUND-BASED games. The Matrix gameplay in this iteration, however, is an extremely annoying (real-time!) back-and-forth clickfest of evading multiple rows of moving sentries (think Commandos mixed with Frogger) and very hard to play on my touchpad. If the reloading times were instantaneous when reloading the same level, this might be forgiven, but that sadly is not the case (it reloads the same speed as the first game after starting the program, probably discards and reloads everything from scratch including the map visuals themselves). The previous implementation (from Dragonfall) was much better conforming to the rest of the engine philosophy. Why anyone would feel inspired to inject pure arcade elements into this, in this one domain, is really beyond me. I will see if I'll power through to see the rest of the story, since I own it anyway, but it feels like work. I recommend against buying this title, and that is solely because of this altered Matrix UX. (The other Shadowrun games are however pretty nice!) I will still give this one two stars, though, because I like the artwork style.