"Impressed" is a strong word, I'm more pleasantly surprised that they could incorporate as much as they could, including multiple solutions, stat checks and game-wide activities that affect the ending, like the Green Winters DVDs and the research into the Yama Kings. That's not to say they are incredible games or that I'm blown away by them, nevermind the order in which I played them. I think it was the correct order, however, Hong Kong is indeed worse than Dragonfall, so I managed to squeeze as much enjoyment out of this series as I could, as opposed to constantly comparing HK to Dragonfall. My opinion wouldn't be different had I played Dragonfall first. The writing in Dragonfall isn't as strong as people make it out to be, though I couldn't predict the twist at the end, which is good. They also managed to keep up the mystery of what is going on until the end. I'd say Eiger was technically the best written of them all, she had a mini-arc she goes through that is logical and is all based on her as a person. Dietrich's character ends at the Humanis compound and he's simply an extension of his idol after that. Glory starts out great and mesmerizing, but "the Devil made me do it" thing ruined it. Blitz is ...Blitz, I guess, he's almost a non-entity, but he's fun to have around on runs. All of them are plagued by the "Bioware syndrome" where you peel layers of their past, that is the wrong approach as far as I'm concerned. The characters need to do stuff NOW, their past needs to affect the PRESENT, their missions aren't enough, they are too passive. Glory should still be in that cult, Dietrich should still front a punk band, etc.
The Kreuzbasar's denizens did their job well, making the hub feel alive, especially Kim/Simmy, she also goes through an arc that makes sense. There really isn't all that much to say about Dragonfall now that I think about it, the combat is the same so I won't go into that. DF is competent and it does its job well, but nobody is going to lose sleep over it and I think it's overrated here. This is not because I played HK first, I wasn't comparing the two at all and I said it's better than HK, so there's that. All the nu-Shadowruns are popcorn games, something light to fill the time, but won't start cults around them. It needs more, they feel limited and don't really use the setting as much as they could. They are still good for what they are, the best mobile games I've played ever and I think they are must-plays if you are into RPGs at all, I'm even going to recommend them to a friend of mine who is still in the shallow end of the pool of gaming as a baby's first turn-based RPG. That's more praise than I can give the other AA RPGs recently, as they aren't must-plays at all, so yeah. I don't regret playing them and I will play them again in the future.
