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Shadowrun Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition

eXalted

Arcane
Joined
Dec 16, 2014
Messages
1,213
Yeah, SRR is nice up until the bugs show up.
But... but... if there are no astral bugs involved what will happen with saving the world plot?!
 

Archibald

Arcane
Joined
Aug 26, 2010
Messages
7,869
Could have tied bugs into serial killer stuff, for example bugs were speaking to him and he was building perfect body for their Queen or some such nonsense. Instead we got "main cultist was totally retarded so she decided to harvest bunch of people, oh by the way, she is also planning apocalypse, better stop her!".
 

Sothpaw

Learned
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
227
About 10 hours in so far. Pretty huge downgrade from Dragonfall. I have been talking and talking and talking and talking and have been in maybe 3 fights in that time. Terrible pacing.

Also the "improved" matrix :hero:
 

almondblight

Arcane
Joined
Aug 10, 2004
Messages
2,549
Well, they stated that after the expansion they're going to take a break from Shadowrun for a while (and that when they come back it will be with a new, probably fully 3D engine).
 

almondblight

Arcane
Joined
Aug 10, 2004
Messages
2,549
Latest is:

We also have the Shadowrun team, who are doing Shadowrun: Hong Kong, they're also fulfilling a Kickstarter reward right now creating a mini-campaign that happens right after the events of Shadowrun: Hong Kong. So you can take your high level character from the end of Shadowrun: Hong Kong and import it into this new mini-campaign. I think it's going to be about a five hour campaign or so. Depending on the level of detail you play at it could be about seven hours. So that's coming out early next year.

and

The Shadowrun team has enjoyed exploring more of the people and places in Hong Kong as they’ve worked on the mini-campaign over the last couple of months. We’re looking forward to sharing it with you in the new year after a healthy dose of iteration, bug fixing, and a final coat of polish.
 

Sothpaw

Learned
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
227
Thanks for explaining why I like Hong Kong better than Dragonfall.

Thing is the combat in the Shadowrun games is actually pretty good. I played a bit more and it looks like the beginning of the game is just slammed with endless dialogue but it seems to even out a bit as you progress. The stealth matrix can go straight to hell though. That shit is just bad (the hacking part is fine by me though).
 
Joined
Dec 12, 2013
Messages
4,229
Finished it some time ago. Overall the game was fun, although far worse than amazing Dragonfall

-Racter and Gaichu are great. Those two are among the most well written and interesting companions in the genre in recent memory. Both are quite morally ambiguous, shady and somehow maniacal. Talking with them is fun as well as reading their barks during missions.
-Goblet was alright. HBS tried with her dialogues to mirror a way players were taught by Dak'kon in P:T and it was successful enough to be entertaining. I don't care about Duncan and I think Is0bel was bad. She might have been a good character but HBS went for too much drama in her lines and she became tiresome.
-Many of new portraits are amazing, they are the best of all kickstarter cRPGs. They can even compete and win with Baldurs Gate 1 portraits.
-Writing was pretty good. Kindly Cheng scenes often felt quite menacing. Sometimes the writing feels it was suffering from graphomania, and the game is badly paced.
-Story starts really strong, even better than Dragonfall. And then it stops. Game forgets PC is hunted by the police and let him go to the parties and do his businesses. Until endgame the story is nearly completely abandoned. There are less endings than in Dragonfall and there is a lack of wonder if choices made were correct.
-The lack of the Lodge and Schsssomething miniquests makes runs far worse. Loved that those quest were often in conflict with each other and made runs far more varied and richer in C&C.
-New augmentations system was fun. The choices are now quite big, we have new slots and I liked weapons like a whip of being overpowered.
-Dragonfall had a really good encounter design. APEX mission was it highlight. Hong Kong only good encounters are the ambush in the first mission, the boss fight and a battle in the tomb raiding mission. From which only the last 2 are not questionable.
-Runs were often very good conceptually but weakly designed. Great example of that was Feng Shui run where the player is tasked with sabotaging the company Feng Shui flow. It's done by clicking on things...
-Combat difficulty was lowered. Very High setting was cut from the game.
-Most encounters are skipable. Sounds great? Never have I thought it is possible to use this feature to make the game worse. Actually I think it is the first time ever something like this has happened in the cRPG genre. How it failed? It is because skipping combat is easy, does not require much player input. It actually felt I was naturally drifting towards peaceful resolutions which takes fun out of outsmarting foes. I honestly and non cynically think HBS has added something to the pool of knowledge of cRPGs design by this mistake.
-Music was ok, but not as great as Dragonfall. Visuals were an improvement from previous installments.
-New matrix was a total letdown. Instead of improving it, HBS made it worse. Was actually cursing when playing it, cannot imagine how somebody thought the design was good and was not slapped for it by his colleagues. Gone are the simultaneous meatspace/matrix battles, instead we have minigames.
 
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Sothpaw

Learned
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
227
Just finished. Agreed that Racter and Gaichu are great. Took them and Is0bel (need a decker) with me at all times. The new matrix is horseshit, specially in the Prosperity tower mission :negative:. Overall the pacing was way off and Dragonfall was a far better game. Still worth a playthrough, just wish they spent more time editing.
 

Jed

Cipher
Joined
Nov 3, 2002
Messages
3,287
Location
Tech Bro Hell
The companions were pretty competent in a fight though, except Gaichu, though that's mostly because he kept missing attacks. And goddamn Racter. :salute:
Gaichu was entirely underwhelming. After all the build up in his story about being part of the elite of the elite security squad, I finally take him out expecting to see his badassery in action, and ... *miss* *miss* *miss*. Point blank with a fucking katana. *miss* You had one job, Gaichu. One job!

Anybody recruit the vampire lady? I didn't realize she was recruitable until after the mission. Didn't feel like re-playing it.
 

Jed

Cipher
Joined
Nov 3, 2002
Messages
3,287
Location
Tech Bro Hell
The new matrix is horseshit, specially in the Prosperity tower mission :negative:.
Jeezus what a pain that was. Decking was almost entirely optional/inconsequential thru the entire game, so I didn't really have Is0bel up to snuff. Ended up attempting that mission 4 or 5 times before I finally got it. Almost quit the game because I didn't feel like backtracking through my saves.
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
Patron
Joined
Sep 25, 2012
Messages
28,237
Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
She's not recruitable per se, she just joins you for the last mission, for a few fights.
 

Grimnir

Novice
Joined
Jan 15, 2016
Messages
39
Location
Beaverlick
This game is boring. The revamped matrix is shit. The combat that was passable in previous games is so easy you can snooze through it.

There was only 1 fight in the entire game that wasn't sleep inducing, but you have to go out of your way to antagonize both sides. For a gritty cyberpunk setting it's surprisingly easy to talk your way out of violence. Are they trying to appeal to their nonexistent casual base? Is that why they removed hard mode? It's as if they really want to make an interactive novel, but feel forced to include the half-ass combat with retarded AI.

Anyway, the writing is the only decent part of these games. Even then, Hong Kong is inferior to Dragonfall or even the 1st half of the original game. Walls-of-text describing things that could easily be inferred through the environment or context. Boring stories from the hub characters, like shadowrunner babysitters and sympathetic girl junkie #5. And extremely poor pacing.

The main plot disappears for most of the game, along with any sense of tension or urgency. Your handler makes your biggest problems disappear and does all the investigating for you, so you do a bunch of random sidequests that have zero connections to main plot. And you can go to a tech expo/socialite party/mall, despite being on the top of Hong Kong's most wanted list with your faces on every news site. At least Dragonfall had you get ambushed a couple of times to remind you of the plot.

I disliked all the companions, except the optional ones. Racter and Gaichu were amusing. Isobel is a bitch, Gobbet is boring, and Duncan is annoying. I like the new cyberware, but the gameplay is too mediocre for me to really enjoy it.
 

Starwars

Arcane
Joined
Jan 31, 2007
Messages
2,829
Location
Sweden
I'm replaying this at the moment. Rachter and Gaichu really are fantastic companions, lots of fun. Gobbet and Is0bel are good as well, though Duncan Wu is a snore.

It is rather more uneven than Dragonfall though. It does lack those few missions that just feel awesome to play like the Aztechnology run in Dragonfall.

I really like the story though (though it unfolds rather unevenly). I can't help but love the way they mix all classic cyberpunk stuff with the big corporations, with the whole mythology of stuff like qi, feng shui and the Yama Kings. Both Dragonfall and Hong Kong amazes me in this regard, how they can pull together all these silly elements into something that feels pretty coherent somehow. I mean, you could nitpick it to death (why the hell can't my shaman read more people's auras for one thing) but I find the stories supremely enjoyable. They just hit the tone of it all perfectly.
 

vmar

Savant
Joined
Oct 17, 2015
Messages
210
And you can go to a tech expo/socialite party/mall, despite being on the top of Hong Kong's most wanted list with your faces on every news site

That really bothered me during my playthrough. During those more public missions i kept thinking swat was gonna show up or something but it wasn't even an issue
 

Gord

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2011
Messages
7,049
And you can go to a tech expo/socialite party/mall, despite being on the top of Hong Kong's most wanted list with your faces on every news site

That really bothered me during my playthrough. During those more public missions i kept thinking swat was gonna show up or something but it wasn't even an issue

That made me wonder, what happens when you have your sin burned by Aunty Chen while being on the Most Wanted Enemy of the State Top Terrorist List in Hong Kong?
Obviously they will not just forget about your existance (while having your sin burned usually should delete most of your traces in various databases, shouldn't it?).

I guess automated surveillance systems won't recognize you anymore and you can successfully provide fake credentials when being stopped and searched?
 

GarfunkeL

Racism Expert
Joined
Nov 7, 2008
Messages
15,463
Location
Insert clever insult here
That's it. Once your SIN is properly burned, all/most data about you is actually purged from various databases. Cameras will not recognize your facial features and your fingerprints and DNA will not immediately raise up red flags. HK doesn't portray you as Osama Bin Laden, ie whose face is familiar to half the world and the various news segments don't even use your portrait. Thus it's very possible and feasible that once the automatic detection systems are fooled, no random person off the street or somebody in a mall will recognize you. Of course, a devilish GM will place some news-nerd in there, someone with photographic memory, who spots the CHAR_NAME and has to be dealt with. I was constantly hoping in that mission that HBS would have done something like that but no :(
 

vmar

Savant
Joined
Oct 17, 2015
Messages
210
Is any of the fan made content for either of the 3 games worth playing? I'm about done with my replay of dragonfall and I'm either gonna replay dragonfall once again, try some user created campaigns, or try to replay hk to see if the 2nd time around is more enjoyable.
 

InD_ImaginE

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 23, 2015
Messages
5,365
Pathfinder: Wrath
Is any of the fan made content for either of the 3 games worth playing? I'm about done with my replay of dragonfall and I'm either gonna replay dragonfall once again, try some user created campaigns, or try to replay hk to see if the 2nd time around is more enjoyable.

for DFDC Antumbra Saga is very very playable
 

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