*The Great Deceiver cocks his head and begins to write*
Just finished this and it was an enjoyable experience. I felt that they've taken the criticism to heart and tried to improve pacing, which was one of HK's biggest problems. Runs have a good mix of non-violent and violent gameplay (speaking of the latter, there's a great fight during one of the side missions, it's been mentioned by
Darth Roxor a few posts up), punctuated by much less verbose dialogue segments.
Which brings us to writing - it's much more to the point this time around and the story (while not groundbreaking) is presented well. NPCs and companions are generally less chatty (there's even one guy that basically tells you that he's not here to give you his life story, which seems like a wink to the audience, with HBS acknowledging that HK went a bit too far in that departament). Second hub saw the return of the infamous chatterboxes swapping (largely mundane) life stories, however. Don't get me wrong, it's commendable that HBS tried to flesh out some minor NPCs, but the problem is that it's hard to get invested in their stories - mostly because these characters are just a background and serve no role in the story. We're obviously not forced to read those, but I reckon that writers' time could be better spent elsewhere (i.e. companion interjections during runs).
Extended Edtion is fairly light on C&C. The game acknowledges some of the choices you've made during the course of the original run, but other than the obvious ones (admitting certain runners into your group) it didn't seem to amount to much.
Soundtrack was largely reused (I think there's a couple of remixes thrown in) and the backgrounds are great looking as usual.
All in all, a very decent take on the Shadowrun and some improvement over largely disappointing Hong Kong. Not quite on par with Dragonfall (which was one my favourite recent cRPGs), but perhaps it shows that HBS was on its last legs and needed a break from the franchise. What's encouraging is that they've attempted to address some of faults of HK.
That said, I'm glad that they've announced that another installment of Shadowrun will be made on a new engine. After Dragonfall (which was a monumental step forward from Returns) I was very much looking forward to Hong Kong and believed that HBS could sustain this with even more adventures released on the same engine. But by now it looks like HBS needs a fresh perspective as they've seem to have exhausted the previous formula.
They're already talking about a sequel in 3D (hopefully without a rotatable camera). They've ditched tablet support with Hong Kong already. I think they should also forgo the editor and instead focus on delivering a fully fleshed out singleplayer cRPG experience. I can see the appeal of an editor, but it proved to be rather unpopular. I don't think Shadowrun has big enough appeal, to be honest - and it's the hugely popular games that typically have a big enough modder scene for it to work.
Other than that - more in depth character advancement, more options in combat (I'd ditch the 2AP system), improved inventory and last but not least, some actual C&C and it could be a hit. Easy, right?