Shadowrun Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition

[mutonizer]

Wondering if this new cyber affinity makes it viable to make a mage with claws. I tried that, got sick of the portrait and restarted (as I often do). I didn't get very far, just finished the first errand for Kindly whatshername. Any thoughts about the buid?

I did DMS with a pure sniper, DF with a decker with some gun thrown in and now I want to give supernatural a chance.

Game tends to favor heavy speccing into one branch and usually magic and cyber don't go hand in hand but why not. My adept build was completely fucked and I couldn't hit anything but the companions carry you no problem, at least on normal and it's a breeze. If you go hard and it's a fucked up build, just use him as bait and load him up with medkits/docwagons I guess
That said, with "boosts" from Ley Lines, all your single DDs spells ricochet across the entire screen to go hit your own people and your buffs/heals all become AEs and affecting enemies. That kinda negated the entire interest for the magic system for me right there and then and never used any magic afterwards so not sure really.

 

[Durandal]

Totally ignoring many of my core decisions was insulting though and when I saw the fucker I had killed (as per game offered choice) appear in the list of companions I could use for the last mission, I just ALT-F4 right then and there and went make myself some tea, something I did many, many times during this playthrough

Wait, is his reappearance explained in-game? Because otherwise it might be a bug, alot of people are reporting bugs with Kong Hong.

 

[cw8]

Any chance to get a Kindly Cheng avatar pic for the forums?

 

[mutonizer]

Wait, is his reappearance explained in-game? Because otherwise it might be a bug, alot of people are reporting bugs with Kong Hong.

No idea and I don't care, he was in the list of potential companions for the last mission, could select him and all that.
I mean, you have ONE dude for whom you purposefully design an encounter with and present the player with a completely binary and definitive choice and you can't even QA if that single shit works, in a game where there are only five fucking companions? Bug or not, to me, this means: "FUCK..THE..PLAYER, you'll do what you're fucking told, period."

 

[Alfons]

Dunno if anyone pointed out, but DEFINITELY take Shadowrunner and ACADEMIC etiquette. Done 2 missions but so far seen around 10 checks for academic

What does it give you though? Some skill checks offer little more than more dialogue while others make some encounters optional. I took gang and used it 4 times. Once it didn't do shit and the other 3 it prevented fights, 2 of them against groups of about 6 or 7 guys.

 

[Zetor]

You can generally find a way to avoid those encounters without having the etiquette, but it may require a harsher skill check, bribery, extra legwork, etc.

I found Socialite and Academic to be pretty useful, especially Socialite.

 

[Stompa]

Spoiler

Subduing Plastic-Faced Man with Duncan's special ability instantly fails the mission

 

[Hoaxmetal]

There's so much text in this that I had to take a nap to process things.

 

[Multidirectional]

So it's another RPG where characters can't shut the fuck up? Or most of that text comes via descriptions/logs and such?

 

[Jackalope]

Maybe I wouldn't mind all the text if the font size wasn't so tiny... Is there a way to fix this without having to play on a shitty resolution?

 

[Jedi Exile]

They only talk if you talk to them, so its mostly optional. There are also a lot of descriptions, yes.

 

[Icewater]

Came in, talked my way past the receptionist, then disabled the security system and elevators with a drone and took the stairs to floor 27.

Spoiler

From there, I looked at/took everything I could. Closed the shutters. Used the computer to jack in to the Matrix, tripped the alarm and killed all the IC's inside. Then some security showed up in meat space despite supposedly being locked out by the shutters. Blasted them. The Russian dude said "we have killed all the security on this floor but they will send reinforcements" or something.

Proceed to another computer and open the main lab doors. Step inside, meet team of random Shadowrunners and agree to cooperate. Poison gas is released and security team spawned, I quickly jack in and disable all 3 vents. Then walk back into the lab to grab the prototype, while holding off a neverending assault of about a zillion other guards. When my char gets to the middle of the room, a wild explosion appears and the team starts talking about "there must be another team of shadowrunners around". You mean like the 4 guys we just met? The guys dodging the bullets and shooting back at the army of Knights Errants? YES THERE'S ANOTHER FUCKING TEAM AROUND.

Suddenly the other team who had been helping me deal with the Zerg rush up to this point vanishes and reappears on the other side of the lab in what looks like a boardroom. But the doors are locked and now they can't reach me. There is no way to open the doors. In the Matrix there is an unmarked terminal you can interact with but doing so just shows a message: ALERT ACTIVE, ACTIVE ALERTS TAKE PRIORITY OVER REGULAR SCHEDULES or some shit. The stairs I used to get up are no longer clickable. There's also an elevator control option which does nothing, probably because I fried the wiring downstairs with a drone, who knows.

So now I can't get out, there's no way to accomplish the last 2 objectives (Find repair unit and Find safe key), believe me there's nothing to click on anymore. And no way to get to or interact with my new "friends", and a constant stream of guards coming out of the goddamn walls.

Tried loading a save from earlier in the mission and the same thing happened.

Huh, weird. I had an issue where I had to go back and use a computer I had already used to get new information seemingly without the game even hinting I needed to do that. I guess I might have just missed it before but I'm usually pretty thorough with all the options. Sounds like your problem is different though.

 

[Fry]

Maybe I wouldn't mind all the text if the font size wasn't so tiny... Is there a way to fix this without having to play on a shitty resolution?

There's a "high res scale mode" option in the settings. At least on my 24" 1920x1200 monitor, it makes text pretty huge.

 

[Jackalope]

There's a "high res scale mode" option in the settings. At least on my 24" 1920x1200 monitor, it makes text pretty huge.

Found it, but it doesn't work on 1680x1500. I guess thats just my luck.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

There's a "high res scale mode" option in the settings. At least on my 24" 1920x1200 monitor, it makes text pretty huge.

Nice, dialogue window now fills the whole side of my 1080p screen instead of half of it.

 

[GarfunkeL]

So it's another RPG where characters can't shut the fuck up? Or most of that text comes via descriptions/logs and such?

None of the text is forced on you. Most of the mandatory dialogues also have a "get to the point" option as well. There's massive amounts of mediocre-to-excellent lore stuff to read if you want to. I'm certainly enjoying reading them.

 

[Starwars]

Really enjoying the game so far. Doesn't have the impact that Dragonfall had (since it really raised the bar from the original campaign) but it's a lot of fun. Wasn't a huge fan of how the game started though but once you can start doing missions it becomes a lot of fun. Shitloads of text that are fun to read and optional. Love that.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Maybe I missed something but it seems to lack any nice loredumps etc. for people who are totally unfamiliar with the setting. Had to consult wiki to figure out what's going on.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Huh, weird. I had an issue where I had to go back and use a computer I had already used to get new information seemingly without the game even hinting I needed to do that. I guess I might have just missed it before but I'm usually pretty thorough with all the options. Sounds like your problem is different though.

Yeah, I restarted and did what Zetor said, it worked fine. Bottom line is, don't go decking around and set off the system alarm in that mission until you need to stop the gas or everything gets messed up. It will probably be patched soon. Or it already has but GOG is unfortunately not the best system for keeping your / Kickstarted games up to date.

Overall I'm liking the game, but I have to agree with what others have said. The music sucks, which is disappointing since it was one of the things that made Dragonfall great.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Maybe I missed something but it seems to lack any nice loredumps etc. for people who are totally unfamiliar with the setting. Had to consult wiki to figure out what's going on.

Yeah, Dragonfall was really good with that too...

 

[Zero Credibility]

Played most of the game (probably), it's like Dragonfall 2, and I'm ok with it. No massive improvements on the formula, but no major fuckups that I can see either. Made a custom decker-mage (because to hell with specialising, the game is not hard enough to demand it). Character points are not a problem to make a fun and reasonably effective multi-class character. But I do find money to be way too restrictive. Decker stuff costs a lot of money, as do spells. So combined, I'm perpetually broke and still can't afford the best stuff, even after finishing all side missions and selling all data I find. I can't even think about buying consumables like I did in Dragonfall (and I played a similar char there), I just can't afford it.

Also, does anyone know if (and where) I can buy a taser early in the game? Loved it in Dragonfall and here it would be even more useful with Duncan around. But the only one I could find is that special version on one of the later missions. Disappointing. As is the late-game armor selection, ugly as hell all of them. Stuck with the cool looking but not very effective corp-mage armor until I find something better that doesn't look like a clown suit.

 

[Zetor]

Yeah, I think they overdid it on the mage gear pricing. I get that they wanted to equalize the nuyen cost between casters and cybered samurai, but I couldn't afford to upgrade my attack spells / powerbolt more than once, and the 6-spell limit is very restrictive on its own (two slots for heal/aim, one for some kind of CC spell like mind wipe or blind... only 3 slots remaining for all attack spells and debuffs). The spell focus stuff is really cool, though: huge radius fireball, permanent armor break that refunds its AP cost the next turn, and blood magic if you're a dirty azzie.

Speaking of which, even though mages need to pump int and cha for some spells, they're still essentially a two-stat class. I had 80+ karma points left over by the time I started the final set of missions, and didn't really feel like spending it (pushing WP/spellcasting beyond 7 would've made things way too easy, body is fine at 4, and I already pumped charisma to 7). I guess I could've dumped it into spirit summoning/control...

 

[Ninjerk]

Not really.
Writing was decent, lot of lore was new and interesting, main story was good though lacking a sense of urgency here and there, choices had consequences and tons of content, varying from dark and gritty to more lighter tones. Combat (I know very touchy subject) was something I enjoyed though I only ever played on PoTD during both my playthroughs. Ability to only use custom made companions was superb, and you could grab just one pre-made if you wanted. Character progression was decently spread out as was itemization and the game had a feel of time to it which gave it some sense.
For the price, as a first release in a franchise (new engine, new setting, new mechanics, etc) I had my money worth and more. Sure there were tons of issues but apart from the last boss (grossely unbalanced at the time, especially on PoTD), it was a pretty good game in my book and above all, I felt the game respected the player (not the case in SR:HK, even less in D:OS, Wasteland 2, etc) and can't remember me doing my "ALT-F4 > Tea" routine, though I'm sure I did once or twice.

Act 2?

 

[Hell March]

Maybe I missed something but it seems to lack any nice loredumps etc. for people who are totally unfamiliar with the setting. Had to consult wiki to figure out what's going on.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, this game loves to assume that your PC is someone that has no awareness of current events. Things that should be common knowledge to anyone "in universe" like the existence of toxic shaman or the status of the Red Samurai are usually locked behind an Etiquette check, which for some reason seems to replace intelligence checks. There was one incident where it took a Corporate Etiquette check for my PC to say he knew the ghoul companion was a Red Samurai, when during his mission you can find a piece of his armor and someone will tell you it's from the Red Samurai. You don't know what you know™, apparently.

Also, I have no idea how one could say the music sucks compared to Dragonfall, it sounds almost exactly the same.

 

[Durandal]

Maybe I missed something but it seems to lack any nice loredumps etc. for people who are totally unfamiliar with the setting. Had to consult wiki to figure out what's going on.

NPCs are willing to dump so much lore if you ask them, it almost updated my journal.
But yeah, the actual setting itself isn't explained alot in-game, probably because HBS expected that most people who'd get HK have already played Dragonfall or DMS, or that 'cyberpunk with magic' is self-explanatory for the most part.