Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition

[h1]Rather no than yes[/h1] Honestly, the game is kinda dated in usability, in showing the goal, stakes, and such. I played for just 15 minutes and have zero desire to explore it further.

I am a big fan of the Shadowrun games, and I quite enjoyed this one as well. The story and worldbuilding was easily my favourite part of it, as tends to be the case with these games, and there are many scenes that are genuinely touching, chilling, hilarious, and thought-provoking. The characters have satisfying arcs and are written well and they all feel like people you could easily meet in real life (if you take away the fantastical setting). This is a narratively great game. The writing is great, but I have three complaints with the game. 1: The biggest issue. The game was far too easy and I almost never had to actually think about how to approach a fight. You have access to all these different characters with skills and abilities that are supposed to make combat more interesting and give you multiple options to approach each mission, but I always used the same characters and combat was always a breeze. Heck, the big bad final boss can be mind-controlled to use its big attacks on its own summoned creatures, completely trivialising the fight and erasing whatever stakes the story had built up. 2: Not a huge issue, but there are a surprising amount of spelling and grammar errors.…

HK is the worst game in the series, and it's not close. Returns and Dragonfall were good games, and I recommend them if you like Shadowrun or turn-based SRPGs. But HK is not worth your time. The game-breaking bugs and massive downgrades to gameplay and UX will likely result in far more frustration than fun. All of the SR games have bugs, but rather than fixing them with each iteration, they increased. And even if you can excuse the abysmal, out-of-place matrix mechanics in this game that left most players looking for cheats to avoid it entirely, there is no excuse for the horrible UI choices that didn't exist in previous games. For example: when setting the loadout of your decker before entering the matrix, you cannot remove a single equipped program and must clear out the ENTIRE gear set to change one program or ESP. Now, combine this with the persistent bug that messes up the item list and causes overlapping items, so the wrong program is equipped when you click one, and you have a recipe that makes you want to uninstall immediately. Gee, I wonder why they didn't make any more games after this one... TLDR: Play the first two games and don't bother with this one.

I absolutely adore this game. It's an easy recomendation from me! The story, the characters, everything is written so well, it made me fall in love with the whole Shadowrun world. There is one problem tho, I can't shake the feeling the game is not "done". As if part of the end is missing. But it still a solid choice overall! If you like Cyberpunk and wanted magic in it. Try Shadowrun!

A decent tactical RPG that covers all the bases in some depth. A character advancement system that requires a bit of thought, a story that ties the missions together (albeit without much choice), companions with some personality, and combat with some depth. Not the best game of its genre, but it delivers the goods well enough that if you want a more relaxing game of its type you should pick it up.

Extremely slow, monotonous game with shallow storyline and characters. You spend the whole game reading irrelevant chitchat. There's no action at all, and jobs are simply moving around levels talking to people.