I reinstalled Dragonfall the other day and have been playing both it and HK consecutively. It's amazing how much better DF is at everything, except not having a single cyberweapon.
It's not just the length of the text dumps, it's better presented in DF. I'm just about done with all the sidequests in HK and I have not seen a single one that I thought was above really bad. No care seems to have been given to any design in the quests, no interesting details - where as in DF there's uniqueness everywhere, encounters are atleast passably interesting, quests make sense overall - but in HK I just get the feeling like doing anything quest related was painful to the developers so they didn't bother. A lot of quests in HK have non-lethal solution, but do I feel like it was worth it? Not even once.
Neither game has a party composition I'd use if I got a choice (why you don't I don't know, non-talkers is fine by me) but if I had to choose I'd go with DF again. When it comes to skills, they're just cloned, except the npc were stronger in DF.
Dialogue choices don't matter in either game, except the odd extra karma here and there. I'm guessing there are going to be diverging choices for the ending, but that's it. Why does a company with members that have backgrounds in actual PnP make such linear products?
Overall, it seems like HBS just took all critique and suggestions that would have applied to HK and shredded them and then went on a drinking binge and let some interns construct legos and write copious amounts of text with no purpose.
Just a quick suggestion of my own, or question, whatever. Why is there no point in shooting people, except clearing an exit or because you felt like it? In oh, several other games you'll make the effort for extra xp or potential loot - but neither applies to SR. Das boring mang.