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Shadowrun Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Guys. Join me in the next phase of RP gaming - where you don't have to do every single goddamn quest in order to fully enjoy a game. Games have so much content now, it is perfectly cromulent to look at a quest and go, "I don't want to do that," and then not do it. This includes talking to every fuckface about their life story to get some shithole quest to find their lost underwear for 2 xp. You're a fucking leet gamer playing on hard anyway, you can do without those 2 xp. Clear cutting every fucking pixel in the game is not the goal any more. It's a buffet. Take what you want and leave the rest. Trust me. It's incredible to play RPGs this way. Just try it in one game - that's all I ask. I bet you never go back to this completionist stupidity.
These are the words of a DA:I apologist.
Ha. Of course if a buffet is nothing but junk food, it is best avoided.
 

Jackalope

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Well, I'm pretty sure we already had the same conversation like 10-15 pages ago...
Text can be a good thing and a bad thing. I didn't mind it in Dragonfall, I didn't mind it in Returns. But Hong-Kong is wordy for the sake of wordy. It just clutters the game to the point of being annoying and dull. Sooner or later you just start skipping stuff.
 

coldcrow

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Liberal use of attributes is considered bad writing in general. If you use it in a videogame it becomes plain shit as it creates either a dissonance between the picture and the description or just doubles the information which is not needed at all. Good writing in videogames has to be either concrete information about what cannot be transported via what is seen, e.g. motivation or actions of npcs, story elements etc. Or abstract information like philosophical problems. I wonder why many writers in vidyagame companies get this wrong.
 
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adddeed

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Also disagree that the Matrix is not good. Enjoyed all additions, the sneaking, the hacking minigame, the way the trace works, made for some thrilling runs. Much much better matrix than the one before, which had very little to differentiate it from normal play.
 

Roguey

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It was only decent in the expansion where they figured out that they needed to have safe obvious blind spots where you can plan out your next move.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Thing that puzzles me about is, who thought it was a good idea to add a twitch minigame to a turn-based RPG?
 

Delterius

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Entre a serra e o mar.
I *think* it wasn't intended as a twitch minigame. Like, you'd observe the Sentry IC's pattern and look for blindspots. Thing is, I don't think that approach works at all times. Partially because alternating between Real Time and TB inside the Matrix can fuck up the Sentry IC's routine.
 

adddeed

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Thing that puzzles me about is, who thought it was a good idea to add a twitch minigame to a turn-based RPG?
No, its not a turn based RPG, its an RPG with turn based combat. The "twitch" matrix segments (lol what kind of dull reflexes you people have anyway calling this twtich), are real time like the majority of the game. And they are much more engaging than the previous game. And if you're such an old fart that they pose serious challenge to you, you CAN JUST FIGHT the sentries instead of sneaking past.


The old matrix was bad because because it was a minor inconvenience. Luckily they fixed that for Hong Kong by making it a major one instead
Another bozo who is unable the appreciate the fact that it was the old matrix which felt more like a slog, not this one. Before fighting was mandatory, here its not if you are able to sneak and hack your way in. And doing so makes the matrix runs actually pretty quick and fun. Fighting is also more interesting because of the new trace system and the fact that enemeies are deadlier.

Bunch of schmucks complaining about everything. At least post some valid criticism instead of whining like some casuals.
 

almondblight

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Aug 10, 2004
Messages
2,549
SR:HK is a pretty steep decline from DF: DC. Probably the biggest problem was the mission design - there just weren't any missions as good as Dragonfall’s, and there were barely any challenging fights. Dragonfall also had a decent amount of non-combat gameplay. For instance, in a single mission in DF you have a choose your own adventure type element where you're sneaking up on an employee (with skillchecks as well), then you have an office where you have to guess the password for the computer by looking at hints on the guys personal devices, then you have a dialogue with the cleaning person you have to successfully navigate to not get the alarm raised (which is more complicated than the usual "Etiquette Cleaning: Is that a model 450F broom? Awesome! You won't call security, right?" stuff you get in HK).

In HK, you're mostly just clicking on every hotspot to trigger the next event (kind of like SRR). The only exceptions to this I can think of are the broken PDA in the bonus campaign and the knapsack puzzle in the museum mission (there's also a guess the password puzzle in the museum mission, but it requires that you Google it). You also get the feeling that they were trying to do more complex things, but didn’t have the time to do them correctly. You’re left with silly stuff like walking up to a cook who doesn’t know you at all and telling them they should poison their guest for being demanding (they readily agree), or walking up to another cook that doesn’t know you at all and telling them they should help you break into the apartment of their guest because the guest is demanding (different mission; they also readily agree).

The combat was also a cakewalk 98% of the time. Part of this might stem from the lack of a Very Hard difficulty mode, but it's also because less attention was paid to encounter design in general. For instance, Dragonfall used turrets well in a number of missions. I don't think they showed up in HK at all, except that you could use them yourself in one part of the bonus campaign. The only two encounters I thought were decent were the one in the lobby during the fengshui mission (if you shoot your way in and don't try to sneak through the lobby) and the final fight in the bonus campaign. Dragonfall had a number of challenging encounters, so the lack of them in HK was pretty disappointing.

The backer content is also terrible. You have a lot of runners looking like comic-con attendees, and of course they all have to be super nice people. Shadowlands in Dragonfall seemed like an online forum for shadowrunners, and in HK it seemed like Reddit.

A lot of little touches were missing too. There seemed to be a lot fewer checks than in Dragonfall. Definitely more racial checks (I don't remember any in HK), but also skill checks. They barely used e-mail, whereas it was used quite well in Dragonfall (people in the hub contacting you about updates, people from previous runs contacting you to catch up, etc.). They also did away with the claim payment system from Dragonfall (not a big thing, but it was a nice touch).

As for the writing - as others have said, the quantity isn’t an issue so much as the text dump nature of it. Dragonfall had some pretty text heavy sequences (like the team meetings or the conversation with Vauclair), but I always enjoyed it. SRHK is bad because it has really boring walls of text, and there’s little interaction from your character (other than selecting one of three different variations of “go on” every few paragraphs).

Hopefully this is mostly the result of rushing the game, and not because HBS lost talent (they seem to have had a high turnover rate).
 

GarfunkeL

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It's understandable that they eased up the missions because the DECLINE crowd whined that the missions were too hard on Dragonfall. There were memorable missions - like the two you mentioned: the two cooks, in both cases you pass a skill check or bribe them. It is possible to botch those. They don't just readily agree. HK was also easier because you were given more options - the cyber-whip alone is way too OP a weapon. Your companions were also buffed and this was direct result of, you guessed it, player complaints from Dragonfall.
 

pippin

Guest
I still believe DF was the perfect balance between old and new for a Shadowrun game. It was lowkey in many aspects, but that allowed the game a chance to shine given your own input.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
:stupid:

Yeah, DF hit a sweet spot. Right scope, interesting characters, didn't try too hard, excellent atmosphere, some pretty good fights.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
There seemed to be a lot fewer checks than in Dragonfall. Definitely more racial checks (I don't remember any in HK), but also skill checks.

rating_citation.png


One of the complaints about the game is that they structured too many missions with an abundance of skill checks allowing them to be dull non-combat runs.
 

eXalted

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Dec 16, 2014
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Yes, play it.

If NPC background story is not interesting for you. Don't ask him and enjoy the game.

There won't be any gameplay consequences or EXP loss.
 

OSK

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I'd say it's better than Returns, but not as good as Dragonfall.
 

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