Shadowrun Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut

[rusty_shackleford]

Little point in debating which is better

 

[Delterius]

Little point in debating which is better

 

[Lacrymas]

Yeah, Is0bel and Gobbet really stoked the fire in me ;d

 

[luj1]

Thx guys

 

[Jason Liang]

Hong Kong's combat encounter design is shit, many of the new guns, spells are cyberware are completely busted, and half of the missions are unfinished (for example the Restaurant mission and the Vampire mission).

 

[Ninjerk]

Thx guys

If you're going to play DMS, once you find out what happened to the "character" and who dun it immediately close your eyes and alt+f4 out of the game and make up an ending in your head. You can't possibly do worse than what was actually made.

 

[DeepOcean]

DMS was a fun noir story that fit extremely well on Shadowrun world until the fan service started on the second part and they feel they need to go epicz, never go epicz, you always end dumb instead. I wish DMS kept the cyber noir until the end.

 

[almondblight]

Hong Kong's combat encounter design is shit, many of the new guns, spells are cyberware are completely busted, and half of the missions are unfinished (for example the Restaurant mission and the Vampire mission).

Pretty much this. It's hard to see how anyone who cares about encounter design or quest design could rank Hong Kong anywhere close to Dragonfall. Hong Kong feels like an incompetent person trying to copy Dragonfall. You even see it in the minor touches, like the Shadowland BBS. In Dragonfall it's written like a place where seasoned Shadowrunners trade stories, in Hong Kong it's Reddit idiocy.

The only thing Hong Kong has going for it is that some of the ideas for the missions are interesting. But the implementation is almost always poor, so it doesn't really matter.

 

[Sheepherder]

Hong Kong's combat encounter design is shit, many of the new guns, spells are cyberware are completely busted, and half of the missions are unfinished (for example the Restaurant mission and the Vampire mission).

Pretty much this. It's hard to see how anyone who cares about encounter design or quest design could rank Hong Kong anywhere close to Dragonfall. Hong Kong feels like an incompetent person trying to copy Dragonfall. You even see it in the minor touches, like the Shadowland BBS. In Dragonfall it's written like a place where seasoned Shadowrunners trade stories, in Hong Kong it's Reddit idiocy.

The only thing Hong Kong has going for it is that some of the ideas for the missions are interesting. But the implementation is almost always poor, so it doesn't really matter.

I agree. For the life of me I cannot remember a single mission in Hong Kong, and I played it more recently than I played Dragonfall. It's been years since my Dragonfall playthrough but I still remember the cybertroll mission, which was one of the early game missions or the the one where you break into some corporate compound, but if you do it loud, a kill squad gets spawned in and you get some awesome combat. Honk Kong is wordswordswords and mediocre missions. None of them bad, but none of them are memorable. meh

 

[Lacrymas]

I remember the feng shui and restaurant missions from Hong Kong. There was also a very tough mission where you are supposed to choose between two factions, but you can screw both of them over and you get to fight them both in front of a building. There are two of those in the series actually, but one of them is in a park and is also tough now that I think about it.

 

[almondblight]

I remember the feng shui and restaurant missions from Hong Kong.

Yeah, the idea for both of those missions (and others, like the convention or the movie party) are interesting. The execution though? You don't really do anything in either. For instance, in the fengshui mission, all you're doing is clicking on any spot that comes up on the screen and getting a message that you messed up the fengshui.

The corporate mission Sheepherder, if I remember correctly, has an executive's office where you can examine their various personal effects to try to figure out their password, which you can type in with a parser. There are dialog based stealth situations where you need to sneak up on someone without them noticing, and if you don't choose carefully and use the right checks the whole thing falls apart. You have to carefully pick the right conversation options with the cleaning lady to talk past her.

Or the cybertroll mission he mentioned. There's a room that's inaccessible because of contamination, but you can use the parser at another computer to research what chemical you need to counter it (and you can research several other things as well). Because it's using a parser, you have to actually put some thought into it, not just mindlessly click. I only recall Hong Kong using the parser for interesting things once in the Shadows of Hong Kong mini-campaign.

You have to put some effort in, and if you get things wrong things get much more difficult. In Hong Kong, non-combat stuff is usually mindlessly clicking on skillchecks, and even if you decide to forego those it doesn't matter since the combat is so easy.

There was also a very tough mission where you are supposed to choose between two factions, but you can screw both of them over and you get to fight them both in front of a building. There are two of those in the series actually, but one of them is in a park and is also tough now that I think about it.

Yeah, that was one of the harder fights in Hong Kong, but there are only a few of them and you usually only get them by intentionally choosing a suboptimal path. Also, I can't think of any that are well designed. Hong Kong encounter design seems to be about how many trash mobs get thrown down to kamikaze you, with easier missions having fewer trash mobs kamikaze you and less easy missions having more kamikaze you (I've heard HBS continued this kind of encounter design on Battletech).

Dragonfall has a variety of encounters; sometimes you're facing more numerous weaker enemies, but sometimes you are facing a small number of strong ones (the mercenaries in the subway, or the basilisk during the medical facility run). The fight with Gaichu's former team should have been like that in Hong Kong, but it ended up just being a fight with a few forgettable trash mobs you kill in seconds.

Dragonfall also had missions where the difficulty was based on interesting design. The cybertroll mission given above, for example - you have an uber killing machine under your control, but you have to rush to take out enemy hackers ASAP while being shot at or it goes over to the enemy. Or the end of Blitz's mission, where you have to take out another team in a locked room. However, there are four turrets in the room, two controlled by your side and two controlled by the opposing side. At the same time, you're in cyberspace with Blitz where you could hack the other two turrets, but there's another hacker trying to do the same, and also attacking you. There are a lot of moving pieces that make for interesting choices - do you ignore the hacker and try to change the turrets? Ignore the turrets and try to take out the hacker? Mix the two? Should you try to make your real world characters hunker down in a corner until Blitz succeeds in the matrix, or have Blitz try to create a temporarily optimal situation in the real world and take out the other team as soon as possible? Confounding matters even more is that you're not doing the mission with your team, it's your main character plus an NPC that only shows up for this run.

 

[Grunker]

Is Dragonfall supposed to be the best Shadowrun game?

By a large margin. These games have thouroughly mediocre-to-bad gameplay, what carries them is atmosphere, charm, mystery and poignancy. Kind of like an isometric Bloodlines.

The first game loses all four halfway through, while the third game buries you in text, Pillars 1-style. So the second game is easily the best.

 

[Lacrymas]

Really, the differences aren't that major. All of them somehow end up too epic by the end, Dragonfall being the most restrained but can still end in you dooming the entire world, so that noir style gets lost regardless.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

I played DF first, HK second and DMS last and I am glad I did that because (even the enhanced version of) DMS just felt so bad that I am not sure I would have bothered with the rest of the series if DMS was my introduction to it (I would agree that the game was passable until the interdimensional bugs or w/e the fuck they were showed up). Personaly I prefer HK to DF, mostly because of the new matrix (I always play as a decker) and increased possibilities to avoid combat (which aint all that hot in the whole series) through dialogue, though I also found the whole "human supremacist" stuff in DF kinda cringey.

IMO the only really good character in DF was Glory and the resolution of her personal storyline wasnt that great, on the other hand Gaichu and Racter were both really cool.

 

[Haplo]

I found Dead Man's Switch good. Of course, Dragonfall was even better. Never could get around to playing HK, after reading how wordy it is... what they did to Hacking and how poor mission design ended.

 

[fantadomat]

I found Dead Man's Switch good. Of course, Dragonfall was even better. Never could get around to playing HK, after reading how wordy it is... what they did to Hacking and how poor mission design ended.

hk is better than dragonfall for sure.

 

[Lacrymas]

Mmm, HK isn't better than Dragonfall. DF is tighter in the mission design and not as overwritten. HK has a lot of dropped storylines halfway through, like the drone vendor for example.

 

[fantadomat]

Mmm, HK isn't better than Dragonfall. DF is tighter in the mission design and not as overwritten. HK has a lot of dropped storylines halfway through, like the drone vendor for example.

It is finished story lol,there is no dropped stories in the game,most likely you just didn't finished them. The writing is a lot better than dragonfall,at very least the companions were superior lol. In dragonfall the only interesting character was the satanic bitch and the rest were either meh or retarded. Also the shadowland chat room was very enjoyable read lol,the poetry bot got out there and joined the AI collective to conquer the world. The mission design is also pretty good.

That said i have no idea what overwritten even means lol,it is ether good writing or bad writing. In hk you could just go from mission to mission and ingnore 90 percent of the writing.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

In hk you could just go from mission to mission and ingnore 90 percent of the writing.

That's because it is overwritten dum dum.

 

[fantadomat]

In hk you could just go from mission to mission and ingnore 90 percent of the writing.

That's because it is overwritten dum dum.

Ok combattard,even the word barbarian is overwritten to you.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

In hk you could just go from mission to mission and ingnore 90 percent of the writing.

That's because it is overwritten dum dum.

Ok combattard,even the word barbarian is overwritten to you.

Look burglarian, if you can ignore 90% of the writing, then why is it there in the first place?
I don't necessarily disagree with you regarding HK, mind. However if most of the text could be ignored you might as well cut it out entirely.

 

[fantadomat]

In hk you could just go from mission to mission and ingnore 90 percent of the writing.

That's because it is overwritten dum dum.

Ok combattard,even the word barbarian is overwritten to you.

Look burglarian, if you can ignore 90% of the writing, then why is it there in the first place?
I don't necessarily disagree with you regarding HK, mind. However if most of the text could be ignored you might as well cut it out entirely.

You could ignore 90percent of the writing in most games. Doesn't mean that ignoring it is a good thing or that you will have a good time. You could ignore 100percent of the writing in king's bounty games too. Now those are over verbose games lol. The whole point is that if a writing is good,there is no such thing as too much of it. You won't sit and bing reading say poe or lovecraft and whine that it have too much to read lol. If the writing was shit,you will say that the writing is shit,not that it is too wordy lol. Sooo in the end there is a bunch of combat fags whining because muh words make them pumpkin hurt.

 

[Tavar]

So, I finished this a few days ago after having played DMS (which I enjoyed a lot). Dragonfall is a strange beast. On paper, everything is better than DMS: More (and more relevant) skill checks, a more fleshed out hub, larger levels, more complex missions, at least the illusion of choices with consequences and more influence on the development on the party members. Still, I enjoyed it much less than DMS because of the writing and the setting. It boggles my mind that so many people in this thread praise the writing of Dragonfall. The main story lacked any player agency for my as I didn't give a fuck about Monika or the Kreuzbasar. Why would I? I have no ties to the setting and you learn nothing about Monika which makes her interesting in any way. Sure, you can pick what your relationship with her was in a dialogue but it is never shown. Contrast that to DMS where your relationship with Sam is shown (instead of just being told) in the tutorial which works much better. Also, all the alleged good things Monika did for the hub are never shown, you just get told by everyone about them. If I had a choice, I would have just left Berlin after the tutorial and called it a day. I also think that the story doesn't make a lot of sense in general and that you achieve nothing in the end.

Besides the main story, I also hated the writing on the characters with the reveal that Gloria was a devil worshipping lesbian witch as the lowlight. Eiger is just an annoying cunt, Blitz is forgettable (and a traitor), and Dietrich seems like a caricature of an aged Antifa member. The antiracism message in the game is also terribly ham fisted, lacks any credibility and therefore just is annoying. I also really disliked the Berlin setting with its terrible use of German (with names like "Drogenkippe", "Kreuzbasar" and "schwarze Herren"). It is funny, though, how dystopian Berlin-Kreuzberg looks better than it does today. All in all, the setting and writing really soured my experience which is why I can only award .

 

[Lacrymas]

Maybe the Kreuzbasar looks better than the actual irl one because of Monika. The writing in DF is definitely stronger than DMS. I'm replaying DMS now too and will post more of my thoughts on that in its own thread, but DF has more going for it, Monika is inconsequential. The companions feel unfinished, yes, except Glory but she's ultimately disappointing with the whole "the devil made me do it" thing.

 

[hello friend]

So, I finished this a few days ago after having played DMS (which I enjoyed a lot). Dragonfall is a strange beast. On paper, everything is better than DMS: More (and more relevant) skill checks, a more fleshed out hub, larger levels, more complex missions, at least the illusion of choices with consequences and more influence on the development on the party members. Still, I enjoyed it much less than DMS because of the writing and the setting. It boggles my mind that so many people in this thread praise the writing of Dragonfall. The main story lacked any player agency for my as I didn't give a fuck about Monika or the Kreuzbasar. Why would I? I have no ties to the setting and you learn nothing about Monika which makes her interesting in any way. Sure, you can pick what your relationship with her was in a dialogue but it is never shown. Contrast that to DMS where your relationship with Sam is shown (instead of just being told) in the tutorial which works much better. Also, all the alleged good things Monika did for the hub are never shown, you just get told by everyone about them. If I had a choice, I would have just left Berlin after the tutorial and called it a day. I also think that the story doesn't make a lot of sense in general and that you achieve nothing in the end.

Besides the main story, I also hated the writing on the characters with the reveal that Gloria was a devil worshipping lesbian witch as the lowlight. Eiger is just an annoying cunt, Blitz is forgettable (and a traitor), and Dietrich seems like a caricature of an aged Antifa member. The antiracism message in the game is also terrible ham fisted, lacks any credibility and therefore just is annoying. I also really disliked the Berlin setting with its terrible use of German (with names like "Drogenkippe", "Kreuzbasar" and "schwarze Herren"). It is funny, though, how dystopian Berlin-Kreuzberg looks better than it does today. All in all, the setting and writing really soured my experience which is why I can only award .

DMS is trash but other than that I agree with most of your points. What Dragonfall had going for it was the AI thing, other than that the characters were all grating woke fan fiction type characters; badly written. Dragonfall is the best of the shadowruns encounterwise and mechanically - Hong Kong wasn't offensive to the sensibilities in the same way, but was a step down on other fronts. You should give Hong Kong a go.

Eiger isn't great, but she's least worst in a bad bunch. Usually she's just focused on getting the job done instead of drawing you into her drama like all the others.