Shadowrun Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition

I am going to give it a whirl and then come back to you.

You are probably right since it didn't seem to work with SRR and when i tried to run it through dragonfall it became a little buggy.
Some of the ai didn't move nor attack and they took a long time to act.

I did test it on HK, and it was much better. I guess my adept will have to stop using the first armor in the extended part.

 

Just finished it. It was what I expected it to be although I preferred Dragonfall. Was not a fan of the revamped matrix. Mostly because it was just a mess at times. I think it's funny that they felt the need to include a stealth component in the matrix yet there is still no stealth in the rest of the game. Although, I did think that the Matrix was better in the mini-campaign because it seemed less messy. The mini-campaign made things more difficult but that was done by increasing horde size. If they want to make the game more difficult they should just let enemies attack more that once per turn. There are still a few bugs in the game. Someone at HBS needs to remember "i before e except after c" because the word retrieve was spelled retreive on several occasions.

Anyways, I think SR is at its best when they have you balancing a few things in a conflict. Either having someone in the matrix doing work while the rest of the team is fighting, working on a time limit, defending a machine, etc. Would have liked more of those in the game. Adds some difficulty to the game and takes away from the monotony of it all.

Overall, I thought it was ok. good enough that I'll back the next one at the minimum tier again but it's getting a bit repetitive.

 

Well, I've finished the mini-campaign and I liked it - but it isn't as good as Hong Kong or Dragonfall. Hong Kong remains the best of the series for me.

I hope they keep making Shadowrun games because they are really good at it - but maybe a new engine is needed.

 

Question: Including the Mini-Campaign, exactly how much Karma is available?

 

Without going back and looking over my last save, about 230 which is a shitload; you might well run out of useful things to do with karma around 200-210.

 

I've 232 Karma on my char after finishing the mini campaign, but I didn't do one of the runs during the OC.
You'll probably have around 220-240 Karma at your disposal, depending on how you play (there are a few optional things that give a karma point once in a while) and whether you do all runs or not.
It does indeed give enough Karma to fully develop your main skill(s) and add some other things on top.

 

Finished the mini campaign.

HBS certainly went out of their way to add mandatory combats and also make passing through via etiquette/speech harder. This made sense both in terms of gameplay and it fits the higher level areas of the epilogue.

Speaking of the Karma discussion, I wish they didn't reward you with any during the epilogue. You don't need it and all it does is incentivize dumping them into body or getting extra abilities you don't need.

I did not find the levels on the whole better than the main HK campaign. Most of them are every bit as linear. The one standout is the final assault on Krait and even that unfortunately gets linear at the end. But the opening area of the final mission is great and there are secrets to discover to change the story.

Speaking of secrets, one of the things I liked and wish they used a bit more was the keyword system. It's used a few times in the mini campaign with a pretty nice effect both as a puzzle and with C&C.


Good stuff:
Injection of a few more puzzles as previously mentioned.

The optional challenge of saving the test subjects, it's very time constrained and puts a lot of pressure on you.

The non-linearity of the map before the final confrontation with Krait.

Dialog with NPCs is less annoying. I think the reason for this is most NPCs you only encounter once or twice. Where as in the main campaign you hear the same Reliable Matthew drone on and on over the same shit after every mission. In the epilogue you are on more of a whirlwind tour and only briefly visit areas. Thus the NPCs don't overstay their welcome.


Shit I hated:
I really fucking hated the interrogation opening, railroaded flavor choice dialog.

HBS did not fix the ridiculous grenade throw back arm and even made it worse. Now they added it to enemies which makes sense, except if you have the magnet arm in your group as well it becomes grenade volleyball. It's so bad to the point where you don't know which enemies have it, so you just stop using grenades. The fix for this is to make it work only once per engagement per character with that perk/cyberware.

Some of the combats were too long, specifically the big finale on one of the optional missions. If you have lower damage output runners it could potentially take 40~ minutes. Except it's just grindy and not hard.

One of the big problems of the nu-matrix that was even more exposed in this version (because it has more auto-start combats) is that it really doesn't make any sense to move, EVER. The reason is there are these little drones that just detect you and increase that number which are also active when combat is over. Well if you stay at the starting area where the mandatory combat starts you avoid hitting those extra detection numbers. So moving to find cover never really makes any sense. Cast sniffer and chuck attacks then move on. Every time.


Could have been better:
They should have outright cut the side missions and instead focused on making three really damn good non linear maps related to the main story.

The extra mandatory combats really exposed the need for a formation system.

I ran into a few weird bugs where some NPCs were clearly saying the lines meant for other NPCs. It was like the game was displaying the wrong portrait/name.

MOAR shadowland BBS.

There could have been better use of vents and maybe an extra optional matrix scenario or two.



A note on the ending

It's a bit button press like, though I did like the choices. I ended up choosing to leave the shadows because fuck Kindly Cheng.

 

There's a keyword system?

 

Ending:

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

I chose Cheng because it seemed like it was either her or Duncan, and fuck Duncan. Worse than Carth Onasi. At least I got to screw with him by pretending there was a ghost in the ship. It was payback for him being such a shitty character.

 

The campaign is definitely an improvement over Hong Kong, which dropped the ball pretty hard in my opinion. However,

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

building the ending drama over something you character probably never really wanted to begin with (a SIN) was not a good decision. And there was no reason in burning the warehouse, Yellow Lotus and Mitsuhama will lose anyway (you were tearing your ass over nothing, because fuck you, that's why).

In other words, the endings could have been better. My character never wanted his old life back, neither he wanted to be a Yellow Lotus pawn forever.

 

I finished the mini-campaign; 220 karma spent from the main campaign (with at least 221 possible) and +28 karma points from the mini (only got 8 karma for Namizu, did anyone get 10?). Overall the mini made up for how crappy the last mission in main was, but still not as great as Dragonfall.

 

I finished the mini-campaign; 220 karma spent from the main campaign (with at least 221 possible) and +28 karma points from the mini (only got 8 karma for Namizu, did anyone get 10?). Overall the mini made up for how crappy the last mission in main was, but still not as great as Dragonfall.

 

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.

 

My main was a Hermetic mage. That made most of the combat easy but repetitive as he was just cycling between Mind Wipe and Dominate (or whatever that was called). Most of the set pieces had dragon lines too, and standing on a max-strength dragon line let him charm three enemies for three rounds. I.e. he effectively CC'ed everyone so the others could then pick them off one by one.

The only fight where I had a certain amount of trouble was the outdoor everyone-vs-everyone one, and that was only before I discovered that I could just rush to the edge of the map and let them slug it out while I picked off the stragglers.

I.e., I was not all that impressed by the combat in the expansion. Maybe it's just that high-level mages are OP, which would be par for course.

 

It is a system in need of Here's a review from a scrub:

Her thoughts on the ending were also hilarious to me.

Tears of a clown.

 

Putting enough points into anything is OP, an ass rifle can just erase two enemies per turn once you get your accuracy up.

It's more like melee sucks (but I never tried melee on a PC) which is par for the course for the PnP(unless it's one of those DV: UR DED builds).

 

I just wanted to say one thing in regards of mini-campaign.

I HAVE 6 AP. AND A PANTHER CANNON. I HAVE BECAME DEATH INCARNATE.

But up until that point yeah, combat encounters were much better than in base game. Enemies still have attack limit though..

Make it 3.

 

Melee is awesome. Well, at least, fun especially in the extra campaign.
Melee adept with that Blue Magic Sword (Running Somewhat? The one that give you 1AP next turn for each kill), Haste, the Broke Armor Spell that add 1AP next turn will result in you running around every turn with constant 6 AP (technically 5, you need to reapply the broke armor spell every turn, but hey, it helps a lot). Enough point in body for the 1 additional essence will afford you two bioware that give 1 to STR and Quickness. With enough point in chi casting you will get Chi Onslaught which is basically 2AP instakill with enough STR.

 

Properly built Melee charakter in Hong Kong is actually on the other end of the spectrum and fucking powerfull.
Haven't tried it with an Adept, but even my Cybersam was slashing and killing goons left&right while not getting killed.
And i
a) didn't take the Monowhip
and
b) multispecced into assault rifles (which i only occasionally used)

So if you go the full route and put all your points into either melee or ranged attack+whip, you get an even more ridiculous combat monster than i had, and i didn't really face many obstacles.

 

Thought the mini campaign would be an improvement, but the made the classic mistake of large battles with a turn based system. The turns can go on for fucking ever.

 

Just finished the bonus campaign. I knew as soon as I met Lam and Qui that I was going to kill them if I could. Turns out I got to torture and then kill them. And as a bonus emo Duncan got pissed and I never had to see him again (bro Richter threw in that he gave no fucks about Duncan). Thumbs up most satisfying end of the four HBS Shadowrun games.

One of the things I appreciate about the Hong Kong games is that there is no bullshit morality shoved at you. You are a gangster and you kill anything in your way and the two shitkickers you run with (Richter and Gaichu) wouldn't have it any other way.

 

Boom! Boom! Great run.

 

The campaign was decent, it's also the moment when I realized I had built a bana shit boring character, and slightly underpower at that.

After Dragonfall and HK though, the next game needs to be way bigger in scope to hold my attention.

 

We agree on that. I can't stand playing follow ups that don't improve on the originals.

 

All they need to do is implement real persistence, not just the weaksauce "global dialog state" stuff they added in HK. Ideally they'd also open up the engine to allow the implementation of a better character system that allowed some real development (the current one is... not very deep, or particularly interesting).

Not holding my breath, though... SRHK clearly seems to be the end of this era, at least. Maybe they'll pick it up again in a new engine if/when Battletech becomes a runaway success?