Good news, I didn't have to wait an entire year to consider this to be in a state of near-completeness. Base campaign thoughts first:
It turned out better than I thought it would (still better than DMS), but I agree it has its issues that make it not-as-good-as-Dragonfall. There are way too many character to mine exposition from in-between runs, and it ends up feeling draining even though I enjoyed most of those stories (e.g. the medic, the troll family, the drone seller, the BBS arcs). I can understand the "not enough combat" complaints, considering that after the intro mission, the first three missions I took (seeing Bao, recruiting Gaichu, Is0bel's quest) could be completed with no combat whatsoever so it ends up with the same pacing problem Mysteries of Westgate had.
After that it gets better, though it still has less combat than Dragonfall: Original Cut. I liked the mummies who could punch you into the mummy dimension and the elementals and mages in that one tower, but aside from that, there's really nothing demanding. In the commentary tracks they mentioned that a few fights were designed to be easy for story purposes, e.g. ambushing Gaichu's old team and the vampire, and I agree with those decisions.
The Matrix was one big "Why?" Why did they think fans of turn-based combat would want to play something that requires good reflexes? The two-action-rpg-minigames-stapled-together approach to hacking data should have been scrapped at the concept phase. Forcing a hack to make everything inevitably go hostile on you is an unacceptable trade-off.
Once again, HBS was pretty good at consistently reinforcing a theme (people trying to escape and being forced to face their past in the base, corrupt corporations in the expansion). Additionally, unlike you guise, I actually liked Is0bel's standoffish autism.
Now for the expansion:
High level campaign that requires completing the base game = the training wheels are off, combat's much better. I noticed here and elsewhere people were complaining about grenadiers being able to throw back grenades, which is an excellent moron detector. It happened to me once and never again, since from that point on I always made it a point to gank the
mage grenadier (or just not include them in the AOE) before throwing 'nades around, LOCK AND LOAD PAY ATTENTION FFFFFFFFFF
The two set-piece battles where you have a five turn limit to complete optional objectives are some of the best fights in the entire series, the one at the Tiger's Den beating out the Apex battle for my Most Tense Experience (sent Duncan by himself to activate a turret, where he preceded to get perpetually stunlocked and surrounded; I finally managed to take care of the stun-baton guy and got him to wake up when he had a sliver of health left, he strategically retreated, healed up, and made it through the end). The street fight versus literally everybody was also stressful, especially given all the reinforcements, but I made it through that with barely a scratch thanks in part to the sacrifice of a sandwich-eater merc I managed to flip to my side. The last mission was a thankfully brief denouement that I made much easier on myself through taking over a robot and convincing the final boss to walk away.
The final choice wasn't much of one. Do I want to go back to a life of ex-con wage-slave drudgery to appease my brother who has done nothing but whine and complain ever since we reconnected, or do I want to hang out with my awesome new family and continue having fantastic adventures together? Looking at the Steam achievements, everyone agrees:
Full Circle: 4.3%
Together/Home Again: 1.1% each
The okay-but-flawed Hong Kong campaign was definitely worth it for the better-combat-than-Dragonfall of Shadows. Nice swan song they made here.
Finally, the character I chose to play as shouldn't come as any surprise:
I doubt she'd like this much, considering its focus on Asian-on-everyone crime.