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Shadowrun Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition

Seaking4

Learned
Joined
Sep 4, 2014
Messages
362
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.
 

Deleted member 7219

Guest
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.
 

Crichton

Prophet
Joined
Jul 7, 2004
Messages
1,210
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.
 

Gord

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2011
Messages
7,049
Question: Including the Mini-Campaign, exactly how much Karma is available?

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.
 
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SniperHF

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2014
Messages
1,110
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.
 

Deleted member 7219

Guest
Ending:

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.
 

Nines

Learned
Joined
Nov 16, 2015
Messages
230
The campaign is definitely an improvement over Hong Kong, which dropped the ball pretty hard in my opinion. However,

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.
 

Jason Liang

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2014
Messages
8,336
Location
Crait
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.
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,404
Location
Djibouti
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.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,653
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. :P 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:

jxNFZRy.png


I doubt she'd like this much, considering its focus on Asian-on-everyone crime. :)
 

Prime Junta

Guest
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.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,653
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 :balance: Here's a review from a scrub:

Most enemies seem to be loaded with the magnetic arm cyber-implant, meaning that grenade-based party members—such as Is0bel—are rendered pretty much useless. Beyond grenadiers, certain character classes are going to have a hard time with the unbalanced combat. Close-quarters fighters have to deal with enemies, who (with a single successful attack) can paralyze them for an entire turn and leave them vulnerable to a hail of automatic fire. Shamans have very few summon spots in the environment and will quickly run through all of their talismans when dealing with the endless stream of enemies. And so on.
...
When I talked about cops being the challenge, I wasn’t joking. One had best be prepared for fighting enough HK cops and private security forces to transform battles from “I’m outnumbered—and, yet, what a fun challenge,” to “Holy God, this game is honestly throwing another wave of armored bullet-sponges at me.” All of this is justified in the narrative, but it isn’t hard to see that instead of crafting unique enemies and challenges, the developers fell back on the interminably boring theory that quantity has a quality all its own.

One particular mission stands out as an example of this: the “Detention” mission. It’s actually a fairly interesting little mission. It seems well-planned, the NPCs involved are appealing, and there are even a few twists that I wasn’t expecting revealed in it. Then you get to the climactic fight scene and the pleasant feelings evaporate like a midsummer puddle.

When I played it, I intentionally chose a path that made the battle more difficult, but I wasn’t expecting the sheer, interminable grind that would result (to be fair, the mission is set up in a way that even choosing one of the “easier” options would have still been a slog). After defeating the first wave of enemies, a second one shows up, then a third, and then a fourth…

In the Harebrained Schemes Shadowrun series, one expects to face superior numbers, but the game is a process of creating a strategy to deal with that challenge. Controlling defensible positions, picking off big hitters, and targeting weaknesses using the party’s skills are all part of the fun of the series. A well-strategized mission will leave the player’s party banged up, but relying on only one or two healing spells or items to survive. However, the “Detention” mission becomes a battle of attrition that flies in the face of the game’s systems.

My team was taking enough little damage that I simply couldn’t deal with the “death by a thousand scratches” in a timely manner. I burned through medkits and resurrection items, trying to alternate healing spells and running after stragglers before ten new enemies with sniper rifles and shotguns showed up on the scene. “Detention” may have been the worst offender, but after the first hour, the game seems to consist of a series of different justifications to have the same copy and pasted Hong Kong police show up by the boatload. It was vaguely laughable that the big scary unique enemies in the final mission were nothing more than “an homage” to Ghost in the Shell. To me, at least, it really hammered home that this “additional content” was a slapdash way of fulfilling their million-dollar funding goal from Kickstarter.

Her thoughts on the ending were also hilarious to me.

Without spoiling anything, the ending is as close to a “rocks fall, everyone dies” scenario as can be presented in the series. The player is railroaded into a no-win situation, and the (potentially) positive ending of the main game is swept away in favor of a sadistic choice that betrays one side or another. This is especially jarring when one of the major concepts running through the main game is that the thoughtful and determined individual can refuse to accept a no-win dichotomy and find a third option. The “golden ending” of “Shadowrun: Hong Kong”, for example, depends on boldly exploiting certain magical constants of the universe originally aimed at one’s player character.

It’s distasteful. That’s the best word for it—distasteful—to see the story of the main game left emotionally hobbled by its epilogue. The Shadowrun setting is a fantastical take on the cyberpunk genre, but it’s still cyberpunk nonetheless. And while individuals in a cyberpunk world are unable to effectively fight the inscrutable power of a techno-bureaucracy, they are capable of cultivating in Hugh MacDiarmad’s words, “some elements of worth” that “with difficulty persist here and there on Earth”.

In the golden ending of the main game, you don’t get sunshine and roses, but you’ve reconciled with your adopted brother, you’ve made a new family with your team, and while you’re still an associate of a gang, you have the option to provide a gentler touch to that gang than some other ne’er-do-well might. You’re acting as the protector of the people of your new home in Heoi. It’s a satisfying ending for a cyberpunk story.

The developers at Harebrained Schemes have the freedom, of course, to do what they want with their games, but what they chose to do in the last five minutes of this epilogue was so repugnant by comparison to what they had crafted in the main game that if this were the coda of a good campaign in the tabletop version of Shadowrun, the players would probably mutiny and demand that somebody else run the sessions from now on.

Tears of a clown.
 

orcinator

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 23, 2016
Messages
1,704
Location
Republic of Kongou
Maybe it's just that high-level mages are OP, which would be par for course.

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).
 

veevoir

Klytus, I'm bored
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
1,797
Location
Riding the train, high on cocaine
Shadorwun: Hong Kong BattleTech
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..
Putting enough points into anything is OP, an ass rifle can just erase two enemies per turn once you get your accuracy up.

Make it 3.
 

InD_ImaginE

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 23, 2015
Messages
5,365
Pathfinder: Wrath
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.
 

Duellist_D

Savant
Patron
Joined
Dec 15, 2013
Messages
383
Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech
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).

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.
 

Sothpaw

Learned
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
227
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.
 

Sothpaw

Learned
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
227
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.
 
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WhiteGuts

Arcane
Joined
May 3, 2013
Messages
2,382
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.
 
Joined
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Messages
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Serpent in the Staglands Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
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.
 

Zetor

Arcane
Joined
Jan 9, 2003
Messages
1,706
Location
Budapest, Hungary
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?
 

GarfunkeL

Racism Expert
Joined
Nov 7, 2008
Messages
15,463
Location
Insert clever insult here
Yes, that's kinda the vibe I've gotten from them. SR was their return, now it's time for BT. If they remain successful, they will return to SW after one or two BT games, probably using their new engine.
 

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