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Shadowrun Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition

InD_ImaginE

Arcane
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Pathfinder: Wrath
So, just finished the game on Hard. Played as a kungfu master physical adept. Seems appropriate, you know, Hong Kong and all.

On technical things, as the previous games, lotsa of bugs. Hell I didn't get any companion quest prizes except for Ratcher's.
As people had said, the hub is waaay too big. It is nice having NPCs appear here and there after a run, but after they no longer appear the big hub just become a slog to walk in.


I actually enjoyed the NPCs having lots of background stories (hey, I enjoyed reading). Honestly the writing is, well, average, but IMO better than some other games I have played lately. Think it would be better if they cut down the text for each NPCs a bit and put the effort to another NPCs instead. Don't understand why people making big fuss over the tect wall though, isn't there like "Shut the hell up" option every time you talk to them if you don't want to listen?

On overall story... well, DF:DC was better. I really liked how your PC have a more fleshed out background and more of a personal stake in the story. But, even though the overall arc seemed urgent, it never really hit the mark. There is, I don't know, a lack of urgency and mystery to the story compared to DF:DC. The end parts also feel rushed, the final confrontation (the whole of them, past thr point of "finish your business") feels somewhat anti-climatic. It could be better if spread to one or more two runs, IMO.

On the companion, God, how I hated is0bel. If not for her awesome deck and her launcher I would never use her. Other companions are interesting enough though. Especially Gaichu, I am a sucker for samurai arch-type. Their quests (both independent and integrated to other runs) are a bit boring though, the only interesting one is Gobbet's. Gaichu's could really use some work ( I was hoping a climatic showdown with lots of conversations and hard fights, but meh).

On overall difficulty it is somewhat easier than DF:DC. Or much easier. There was only one fight that was challenging in the whole game and simply on the virtue of sheer amount of oppositions you faced on the battle. Hell the final boss was piss poor easy, Dunbro and Koschei lobs granade, went on firing, and BAM, finished. DF:DC final fight was much-much harder.

I really enjoyed the game though, and hope HBS could keep churning out these games (I really liked the setting). But not too often, unless they have some kind of new innovations in their engine. People bound to get bored with the same thing over and over again and I don't want to see the series burned up too fast.

Oh regarding the etiquette check, I took Gang, Academic, and later in the game, Corporate. Yeah there are a lot of Academic checks but most of them are for flavor texts. In the times when it would be useful, usually high enough of other stats are enough to avoid the fight.



And, uh first post in the codex forum. Please be good to me senpais. :desu:
 

Zarniwoop

TESTOSTERONIC As Fuck™
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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
What? The music is awesome!

Yeah, ok it doesn't suck. It just doesn't fit the setting as well as Dragonfall did. But then it's hard to beat that. Kind of how Civ V's music isn't exactly bad, it's just not Baba Yetu.
 

Zarniwoop

TESTOSTERONIC As Fuck™
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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Found another loltasic bug

In the Outsiders mission, I sided with the elders and killed the ghoul, Gaichu. Got my reward, elders are happy yet he's in my squad ready for missions anyways. Best of both worlds yo!

:lol: :lol: :lol:
 

Gozma

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Aug 1, 2012
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2,951
The big scripting bug I noticed was the decker girl saying that I'd summoned a ghost for the tutorial mission when I did the, "What did you think about the last mission?" question. I was like what, that was possible?

I've never played a hardcore cyber guy that tries to go to .00001 essence in these (I did mage -> rigger/decker -> mage in DMS/DF/HK), but I imagine the cyberware is kind of underwhelming for them, right? It's all +1 body and +1 strength and shit; kinda boring and it's all expensive as hell. I spent the six karma on cyberware affinity for the HK mage to get an extra essence thinking I'd get one point of cyberware but nothing really seems worth the money. Laser designator maybe? Some free zero AP thing I can do to buff everyone's accuracy every couple rounds.
 
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
2,952
Fuck, ran into a bug. I'm hacking those security stations, just got the last one, and then I can't leave the room any more because the game bugged out and thinks the doors are closed. Sigh, another reload.
 

Jaedar

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Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
I've never played a hardcore cyber guy that tries to go to .00001 essence in these (I did mage -> rigger/decker -> mage in DMS/DF/HK), but I imagine the cyberware is kind of underwhelming for them, right? It's all +1 body and +1 strength and shit; kinda boring and it's all expensive as hell. I spent the six karma on cyberware affinity for the HK mage to get an extra essence thinking I'd get one point of cyberware but nothing really seems worth the money. Laser designator maybe? Some free zero AP thing I can do to buff everyone's accuracy every couple rounds.
There are some good cyberware: Dodge first attack each round, +1 AP (glorys one), +1 quickness/ranged. There's also quite a few bad ones (+1 Int for example).

The big issue is the cost though, I'm not sure its feasible to afford going to low essence, especially if you count that cyberware affinity gives +2.

I suppose if one goes 100% cyberware, and never buys anything but that it might be possible.
 

Starwars

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Jan 31, 2007
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Sweden
Gaichu is a pretty awesome character. Might be my favorite in the Shadowrun campaigns so far.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
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You'd think that by now HBS would be past this fake C&C.
Their original multiplatform design still holds back the game.

Narrative-only reactivity has nothing to do with platform. Their fondness for Bioware is obvious.
 
Self-Ejected

Ulminati

Kamelåså!
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Finished the game. Didn't encounter any bugs. But that's pretty normal for me when I play games where everyone is complaining about them. Maybe I'm just lucky. :P
 

Zetor

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Jan 9, 2003
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Budapest, Hungary
Yea, I also finished the game... I found a few glitches like '1 unread email' at the end and not getting Racter's achievement, but nothing game-stopping. Looking at the forums, though, it seems there are quite a few b0rked spots (mainly the Ares run -- it can become unwinnable if you trip the matrix alarm).

In some ways it was less satisfying than Dragonfall, but I appreciated the entire 'in SR, myths/fairytales can become real... and the way to defeat them is by knowing the nuances of the myths rather than just shooting / nuking them until they stop moving' thing. I wonder if the Yama Kings stuff is an Earthdawn holdover? I also noticed that Aljernon showed up in the magic shop during the investigation, but didn't have too much to say.

I think this was the first endgame enemy in the SRR series where the threat was 100% human-created... even though the Yama Kings are supernatural entities from another dimension (shadow spirits?), the only reason one of them was able to appear in our world was because of the greed of some corp execs. Dragonfall had some similar themes, but it was still heavily metaplot-driven with the dragon and stuff.

My biggest peeve is that the story overlaps the module I'm working on... in multiple spots (the entire magical storm/typhoon concept + the side mission that takes place on a cargo ship). Also, my pen-and-paper character in our HK campaign was pretty much Racter without the drone (mad russian scientist experimenting with posthuman cybernetic enhancements on himself). /angrytroll

edit: ~20 hours playtime -- a bit longer than non-DC DF and a bit shorter than DFDC. This was a completionist run, though -- if you stick to the critical path, it's probably going to be just a bit shorter than vanilla DF.
 
Last edited:

imweasel

Guest
Narrative-only reactivity has nothing to do with platform. Their fondness for Bioware is obvious.
More like Telltale. SR:HK is more of an interactive novel than an RPG. HBS really went overboard with the writing.
 

Jedi Exile

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Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong
If you don't talk to every NPC you encounter, it's just fine. And I don't really see anything wrong with being a wordy game.
 

Zetor

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Budapest, Hungary
Much of the combat is also avoidable (in fact, there are quite a few runs that can be completed without firing a single shot), which probably contributes to the "visual novel" impression.
 

Alfons

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Jul 25, 2014
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copypasta from /v/, supposedly the total number of each etiquette check:

Academic - 10
Shadowrunner - 6
Socialite - 4
Gang - 2
Corporate - 2
Security - 2

it's a little lopsided
That's because it's fucking wrong. I restarted a couple of times and it seems that there's a bug where skill checks or etiquette checks simply don't show up. I had a PC that only took quickness and ranged and a few places where I know for a fact there are 2-3 skill checks didn't show up at all and I'm not talking about blacked out options, they're not there at all. So far I counted.
Gang-4
Sec-3
There are obviously others, but that's just the different ones I see right off the bat. And those numbers are up until the middle of the game, maybe three-quarters. Not to mention that a lot of these etiquette checks are purely for flavor and they do fuck all practically speaking while others allow you to skip chunks of the game.
 

Duellist_D

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech
Finished it, was a good ride.

Glad that we (again) had to options on how to end the game.

Multispeccing is not as rewarding as in DC and DMS, especially the low-level rigging part. The Totem is still an absolute no-brainer for basically every char though.
I enjoyed the new cyberware options, especially the weapons, only missed a few *wares from DC.

Cybermelee is a blast, even without the whip.
Money was a bit lacking, i would have liked to get more ware/stuff.
To bad the game was piss easy in most of the parts.
The tons of tl;dr wall of texts are due to Kickstarter, there was a backerlevel where you could submit your own char to appear ingame, which A LOT of people took.
Also thumbs up to HBS to make Bull basically suck donkeyballs with his self-insert.
No decking, no panther, just a retarded pistol.

Only annoying bug that i encountered was with the tech-kiddie.
Couldn't get the mission from strangler Bao so when the puppet appeared, that made absolutely no sense.
Rest was tame.



Overall, 8/10
Would buy again
Looking forward to the mini-campaign.
 

imweasel

Guest
Looks like Shadowrun: Hong Kong is well on it's way to being the least popular HBS Shadowrun game on Steam...

Mostly just because of the new Matrix. Some people actually think that you have to do all nine levels of the number memory game to hack a blocker IC. lol
 

Duellist_D

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech
People can't read manuals and will always blame the device for "not working" when its actually their own fault.
 

Beowulf

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Mar 2, 2015
Messages
2,027
Ok. First of all, how do you introduce yourself as IsZerobell?

On the topic of that hacking minigame - this symbol puzzle is actually easier to do, the higher the IC Blocker rating, some sound statistical thinking went into this :)
Overall it grips me less then Dragonfall for various reasons, but it's still decent. No regrets buying.
So far the past part was the cheap comedy value of IzZerobell side mission finale.
 

SausageInYourFace

Codexian Sausage
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Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit. Pathfinder: Wrath
Much of the combat is also avoidable (in fact, there are quite a few runs that can be completed without firing a single shot), which probably contributes to the "visual novel" impression.

I was hoping they would improve here. Afterall, the most fun P&P sessions for me were when a well planned run went perfectly clean and without violence.
 

Gord

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Feb 16, 2011
Messages
7,049
They should have communicated the new Matrix/hacking a bit better, imo.
Just a small popup about the basics (or where to find them) when you first do it would go a long way already to make the average player understand what he needs to do.
 

Zarniwoop

TESTOSTERONIC As Fuck™
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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Yea, I also finished the game... I found a few glitches like '1 unread email' at the end and not getting Racter's achievement, but nothing game-stopping. Looking at the forums, though, it seems there are quite a few b0rked spots (mainly the Ares run -- it can become unwinnable if you trip the matrix alarm).

That one sucks big time. But as I proved, you can just restart the mission and not try to be a l33t h4xx0r from the start, just go straight for the goods. Makes the mission a LOT easier and shorter too. So it doesn't quite break the game, you just have to do things in a particular order.
 

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