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Unlike you some blokes can leave no stone unturned.
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Shadowrun Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition
- Thread starter Ulminati
- Start date
FritzedProcess
Arcane
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- Jan 7, 2017
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- 1,379
I got it on my first and only playthrough so far.
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2016
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- 4,650
Let me just state my opinion that it's debatable whether the 'best ending' people are referring to here is actually the best ending. It requires letting that Queen monstrosity just walk away, and I'm not okay with that. Also, I wasn't particularly attached to Raymond anyway.
fantadomat
Arcane
You people do call everything an infodump lol. Gathering information about some magical being from the only mage user,is hardly an infodump lol. But i do agree that the quality of the writing had decreased in some aspect,but it was also pretty good in other parts.
As an aside, which other RPGs give you the ability to play as a badass criminal who does mafia like things? And I mean actually play that stuff out, I am aware most RPGs offer some kind of pickpocketing and so on. The best RPGs that give me that experience are SR HK and AoD thieves guild. TES usually offer some thieves guild criminal underground experieces as well. What else is there?
V_K
Arcane
I don't think she dies in the other ending either. I think you just get her to go back to her realm either way - by force or by cunning.
Seven: Days Long Gone, I assume. I've yet to give it a proper playthrough though.
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- 28,370
She leaves with her tail between her legs and with nothing in return. As opposed to just getting banished.
Same. Referred not to you, however.
- Joined
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You can do both.
DeepOcean
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2012
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- 7,395
I found the hidden ending on the first try also, my OCD wouldn't let me in peace and I had to read everything, I managed to read all dialog even of the used drone salesman guy.
I second Seven: Days Long Gone, a legit thieving game. (with needlessly complicated crafting...)
A weakness of all three games is relatively good writing but delivered in an unnatural way. Especially with your team, it's like opening a wikipedia article.
almondblight
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2004
- Messages
- 2,549
HK is significantly worse than Dragonfall in just about every way:
- The writing is worse. Lots of non-interactive text dumps really dragged the game down. There was a lot of writing in Dragonfall, but people didn't just dump their entire life stories on you like in HK. HK also has a lot more LOLzy writing. Take the shadowland board, for example. In Dragonfall it feels like a place where runners would go and trade gossip, but in HK it feels like a stupid reddit sub.
- Encounter design is much worse in HK. HK enounters are mostly a bunch of weaker guys rushing at you (and I've heard Battletech is the same). To increase difficulty they merely upped the number of enemies, and the higher amount of enemies (like in the tower extraction mission) can make the wait between turns painfully slow. In contrast, it felt like effort was made to make many of the Dragonfall fights unique and challenging (at least on the highest difficulty). Blitz's mission has you taking on another team while Blitz is in the matrix trying to juggle between taking on another Decker and trying to turn the turrets on to your side. The cybertroll mission gives you a super-powerful ally, but one who will become an enemy if you don't take out the enemy hacker fast enough. Sometimes you fought a number of weak opponents, but sometimes you also fought fewer strong opponents (the mercenaries, the basilisk). It might be my imagination, but enemies also seemed to use cover a lot more.
- The matrix is worse in HK. Though the first two games had a pretty poorly designed matrix, Dragonfall managed to squeeze something decent out of it, with some interesting puzzles (like the bit puzzles) and encounters (like Blitz's fight with the other decker). The matrix in HK was so bad I stopped hacking and started brute forcing everything (which actually lead to the one decent fight in the base game).
- The non-combat gameplay is worse in HK. In Dragonfall there are parts where you have to use kiosks to do research, you have to explore someone's desk to guess their passcode, where talking your way through people involves choosing the right dialogue options and no just a simple skillcheck, etc. You get a couple of interesting things like this in HK (like searching the phone in the bonus campaign), but they're much fewer.
I could go on - much better C&C in Dragonfall, better use of e-mail (felt like an afterthought in HK), better designed main hub, etc. I think the only thing HK improves upon was that the premise for the missions were more interesting. But that doesn't make much of a difference, since the premise for the missions didn't affect the gameplay. Sabotaging fengshui (for instance) is just wandering around a building and clicking on whatever pops up.
Originally Dragonfall was simply supposed to be a small Berlin module, but then HBS decided to let it be longer because of the disappointment in SRR. Then they released an extended edition based on the positive reception. My guess is that Dragonfall is better because it was built with a small team of talented individuals. Having the uppermanagement directly in charge of HK and adding a bunch of other developers only succeeded in making HK worse. It's telling that the best game coming from HBS - the only truly good game they've made - is the one whose development team was most disconnected from the rest of the company.
- The writing is worse. Lots of non-interactive text dumps really dragged the game down. There was a lot of writing in Dragonfall, but people didn't just dump their entire life stories on you like in HK. HK also has a lot more LOLzy writing. Take the shadowland board, for example. In Dragonfall it feels like a place where runners would go and trade gossip, but in HK it feels like a stupid reddit sub.
- Encounter design is much worse in HK. HK enounters are mostly a bunch of weaker guys rushing at you (and I've heard Battletech is the same). To increase difficulty they merely upped the number of enemies, and the higher amount of enemies (like in the tower extraction mission) can make the wait between turns painfully slow. In contrast, it felt like effort was made to make many of the Dragonfall fights unique and challenging (at least on the highest difficulty). Blitz's mission has you taking on another team while Blitz is in the matrix trying to juggle between taking on another Decker and trying to turn the turrets on to your side. The cybertroll mission gives you a super-powerful ally, but one who will become an enemy if you don't take out the enemy hacker fast enough. Sometimes you fought a number of weak opponents, but sometimes you also fought fewer strong opponents (the mercenaries, the basilisk). It might be my imagination, but enemies also seemed to use cover a lot more.
- The matrix is worse in HK. Though the first two games had a pretty poorly designed matrix, Dragonfall managed to squeeze something decent out of it, with some interesting puzzles (like the bit puzzles) and encounters (like Blitz's fight with the other decker). The matrix in HK was so bad I stopped hacking and started brute forcing everything (which actually lead to the one decent fight in the base game).
- The non-combat gameplay is worse in HK. In Dragonfall there are parts where you have to use kiosks to do research, you have to explore someone's desk to guess their passcode, where talking your way through people involves choosing the right dialogue options and no just a simple skillcheck, etc. You get a couple of interesting things like this in HK (like searching the phone in the bonus campaign), but they're much fewer.
I could go on - much better C&C in Dragonfall, better use of e-mail (felt like an afterthought in HK), better designed main hub, etc. I think the only thing HK improves upon was that the premise for the missions were more interesting. But that doesn't make much of a difference, since the premise for the missions didn't affect the gameplay. Sabotaging fengshui (for instance) is just wandering around a building and clicking on whatever pops up.
Originally Dragonfall was simply supposed to be a small Berlin module, but then HBS decided to let it be longer because of the disappointment in SRR. Then they released an extended edition based on the positive reception. My guess is that Dragonfall is better because it was built with a small team of talented individuals. Having the uppermanagement directly in charge of HK and adding a bunch of other developers only succeeded in making HK worse. It's telling that the best game coming from HBS - the only truly good game they've made - is the one whose development team was most disconnected from the rest of the company.
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2016
- Messages
- 4,650
This is exactly what a place like that would look like IRL.
Then I still don't see what there is to complain about. Someone who plays through every choice in every combination is going to get all the endings anyway.
Lacrymas
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2015
- Messages
- 18,022
Soooo, are HBS going to return to Shadowrun or what? I don't know where else to ask his question, we don't have a dedicated HBS forum. Battletech is eeeehh as far as I can tell, at least the nu-Shadowruns are entertaining. I'm playing through Dead Man's Switch now (because it's the only one available in German) and I kinda still like it on a second playthrough. I'm playing a troll adept (yeah, I know dwarves are better, but I played a dwarf last time and I wanted to be a hulking mass of meat) and it's pretty fun, although a bit karma-starved, especially when contrasted with riggers. The combat encounters are well thought out, if a bit easy even on the toughest difficulty, and the atmosphere is great, they somehow avoided being edgy. I won't be playing through the others now, even though I want to, because I can't justify playing something that isn't in German atm, so I'm enjoying DMS as much as I can and it's quite easy to enjoy actually. But I digress, when are HBS gonna continue, lol?
Delterius
Arcane
possibly never because of ip things
V_K
Arcane
Shadowrun is owned by Microsoft.
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