Shadowrun Hong Kong - Extended Edition

Haven't finished this game yet. I'd say it's an... incredible book, even if it should not particularly a long one. The interaction and conversation options are really tailored, even for someone who's not quite a young man. On the other hand a casual gamer may find it hard to dwell into a world where you'd have conversations with dozens of people after each run. In real life? Build up a network. And in this game, it's like playing a shadowrunner reading the surrounding world for any piece of trails you could use for your future jobs, which always have risks and thrills. Fantastic, heavy, but fantastic game.

The end of the Shadowrun trilogy. Now in Hong Kong this game see far more changes than just the setting. The graphics engine has been updated and the models look better. The hacking gameplay is different now and is more about stealth. The combat and well written story is the same as previous games. This game seems to be the accumulation of all the good from the last two games. It has the best story, gameplay, and companions of the three. This game ends the trilogy on a high note.

I played Returns. I liked it and it made me want to play Dragonfall. I played Dragonfall. I liked it and it made me want to play Hong Kong. I played Hong Kong. I did not liked it and I won’t play its extension. This game has a lot of issues. Its story is basically Dragonfall story (which was almost the same as Returns yet). You’re new in town and you have to find someone who disappear fighting against a conspiracy. Shadowrun is 20 years old, has six editions and zillion of addons, but this videogame series is three times the same story. Then the scenario: all rpg gamers know the classic construction, with an alternation of quests building the story and side quests enriching the game, all creating a feeling of progression based on interwined elements In Hong Kong, you have the beginning, side quests, two quests and the end. In this order. The game is a long tunnel of runs with no impact on the game, then it finishes closing its story without involving the player. Maybe Harebrained Schemes and Paradox Interactive choose to not stick to a classic story and innovate with a new way to tell it, but it’s not successful. Not at all. Characters are not well written. They are archetypal, caricatural and verbose. Please, do not make them talk again and again. We already know their speech; we previously met all of them in our gamer life. Last thing, the matrix is now a tedious place. A minigame was added: good. But only one: bad. The first time, it’s new, it’s fun. Played dozens of times, it’s boring. And the “action way” to move in is anachronic. The “IRL” main part is a tactical game: players take their time to plan their actions. Why make the matrix a part requesting dexterity? It’s not a platformer or a rhythm game. In the end, I finished the game because I get rid of it. It has too many flaws - which are too critical - to be enjoyed The game as only one quality: there are a lot of female characters in Hong Kong and they are powerful and/or credible.

But bonus campaign fixed it for me some So 2/3 of a game you have very short missions and A LOT of dialogues. I was trying to read everything, then to read just main words, then I was just skipping dialogs and reading only answers. It was much faster and there are not much interesting details in them anyway. Other thing I do not like is changed advancement screen. It does look good (even if it is more compact than original) and it takes too much time to load it. In fact this game takes a lot more time to load a save than other games of the trilogy. Then there is decking and it is tedious. Thanks gods you can force some things, but even so a lot of times you need to stealth around stuff to not get caught and you will need to load a lot for it. And this game still have bugs, not game breaking, but for some reason I was not able to get best ending when I were able to obtain all of the dialogs and information. But bonus campaign is really fun, missions are long and challenging, dialogs are mostly short and there is no script bugs/ Also I don't like that all armor now have no extra stats, they look different, but they are not different. Why it was made this way...I am not sure.

I played this game with the goal of writing a long-ish review in mind. For that reason I tracked hours and took note of the good and especially the bad bits. For lack of space this is a brief summary. I played the three titles in order. The world of Shadowrun was new to me and a welcome departure from RPG systems I knew, mostly D&D and S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (Fallout). Having both technology and magic available in a fantasy world is a nice thing, and while it is not as interesting as in Arcanum it provides at least some character specialisation. What I liked most about the first two titles were the stories. They were relatively interesting, well told and had one or two twists in them, making them non-obvious. Her is where 'Hong Kong' failed miserably. The story is obvious from the start. You know where you have to go, you even roughly go there during your first mission, but the game does not let you go there until the very end. What do you have to do in the meantime? Grind through some missions for no good reason and read through literally hours of boring flavour text that doesn't provide much of anything really. I read through all of it and give you one advice: skip through the dialogues and save yourself ten hours or so, you won't miss anything. Other than that the game has some improvements to offer, namely the new matrix, an acceptable inventory system, simple cut scenes and the ability to enter a fight before the enemy sees you. There are also a lot of areas that were and still are lacking. Some minor bugs and oddities in the interface were carried over from part one, some new bugs were introduced and are unfixed, extremely linear story, lack of tactical options and a superficial China setting. If you could play the previous two titles using the engine of this one I might say go for it, but as far as I know that is not possible. There is an active modding community, so something good might come from there. As it is I recommend you to get 'Returns' or 'Dragonfall".