From the dev commentary: “if [the story doesn’t work], the rest of the game just compounds on that error”
THEY KNEW!! THEY KNEW ALL ALONG THAT THE GAME-PLAY SUCKED!!
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Shadowrun: Hong Kong
37 hours playtime
15 of 60 achievements
This is a turn-based tactics game, just like the last two. You spend AP to move and attack, and outside battle, you explore and examine objects to progress. The main difference is that the variance for hit chance is much higher than the last two games: even from the very first battle, you could get anywhere from 60% to TWELVE (12) percent (!!) depending on how far away you are from enemies, and this is on Normal mode! Aside from that, combat is unchanged: cover only increases the chance an attack will do less damage, and there’s no other level design to make combat interesting or have any tactical depth at all, so the game relies on percent chances to make things seem challenging. This game also has voiced parts, but no options for subtitles or pausing cut-scenes. There’s also optional dev commentary (that also doesn’t have subtitles and can’t be paused), and if you turn it on and listen to it, you’ll notice that they only ever talk about the narrative and aesthetics, conveniently failing to mention anything about the combat and how terrible it is.
Hell, this game gets things wrong that the previous entries got right! There are more typos in the script, you can’t deselect drone buffs (even if you only switched to the character and didn’t actually click one of said buffs, meaning you can’t switch characters again without spending AP), and if you die, the game doesn’t bring up a game over screen: you have to open the menu and load a save manually (oddly enough, if you die, you can still move allies, but can’t attack enemies due to fog of war).
To be fair, Decking segments have gotten a significant overhaul: rather than being a reskinned combat segment where you only have one party member and enemies miss you most of the time, it’s a semi-stealth segment where you have to avoid search-lights that move on set paths (P.S. avoiding things in real time when your character moves by automatic path-finding is a recipe for disaster); if you get caught, the alarm state goes up, and if the alarm state gets full, then it turns into a reskinned combat segment where you only have one party member and enemies miss you most of the time. There’s also a brand new mini-game added for unlocking points-of-interest in Decking segments, but I didn’t think it was explained very well and found it rather confusing; luckily, the game gives you the option to force past them at the cost of raising the alarm state (failing the mini-game raises the alarm state anyway).
There’s also a new mechanic added that let’s you go straight from exploration mode to attack mode, but it’s only ever available if there are enemies or explosive barrels nearby (so chances are you won’t be able to use it when you’d most want to, e.g. use healing items outside of battle). Then again, running circles around the final enemy in a Decking mission to wait for the “lower the alarm state” item to be usable again is the closest the game ever gets to having strategic options within combat.
The game’s difficulty is also out of whack. With Dragonfall, at least that game saved the hardest mission for last, but for this game, every combat segment was about the same except for the final part of the Geomantic Sabotage mission, where you have to fight a group of five mages. Not only do their attacks deal 19 damage (to your max 40 HP team, save yourself), and not only do they have a high critical hit chance (deals twice as much damage), but three of them start off on Dragon Lines. In the previous games, Ley Lines only ever altered percent chances, making them practically irrelevant, but in this game, using a spell on a Dragon Line causes it to bounce to another random target after hitting the first target, which means three of the five attacks deal at least 19 damage to TWO of your party members. Needless to say, this mission was significantly harder than even the final boss, and just like last time, I only won by using summoning spells to increase the number of team members on my side (something I never had to do again).
Still not recommended.
Dang, this is disappointing to read. For all of its flaws I loved Dragonfall. I was hoping HK would be even better. How would you rate the story compared to previous entries?
For all of its flaws I loved Dragonfall.
Then you’ll probably like this one, too, honestly. Besides the Matrix overhaul (which is an improvement over the previous games’ Matrix segments), the main difference with combat is that hit-chance is much more volatile; I thought it might be that being further away from enemies had more of a penalty to hit chance, but other times, that didn’t seem to be the case.
How would you rate the story compared to previous entries?
Uh…I’ve never really given much focus to a game’s story before. Like, if it’s there, I’ll try to enjoy it, but the main draw of games are the game-play, you know? I can get story with books and movies, and even “choose your own adventure” books have branching dialogue options with your choices having a major impact on what happens, but only games can have real-time action or strategic depth.
I can try though:
Non-spoilers:
Dragonfall was more about having a main story: you were only doing optional missions because you needed to raise money to progress, and if you knew to take jobs from the Jobs directory rather than the Messages directory, you only needed to do, like, three of them (of course, then you’d miss out on Knight-Kings of Lightninghold, which is the best part of that game). In this game, the focus is more on the side activities: sure, there’s a Call to Action, but much of the game is you waiting on your fixer to hear back from various sources, and you have much more optional missions to choose from as well (in fact, I think team “trust” missions also count towards your progress since one of those ended up being the last one I did before unlocking the story progression mission). There isn’t even an indication for how many side missions you have to do before the game lets you progress; you just get notified about it by your fixer after you get back from a random mission.
Also, they tried to give the player character a more concrete backstory, but rather than flesh it out based on your dialogue choices (or at all, really), they just leave it as “you grew up in the Barrens, then willingly left your foster father and best friend/foster brother and ended up in jail for eight years,” and whenever you get a dialogue choice based on some event in the past, picking the “wrong” one will have the other character say “no, actually this happened,” even though there’s no way you could know that on a blind play-through. I distinctly remember Dragonfall letting you choose your own backstory and your relationship with Monica somewhat, though it was limited to a single optional dialogue and was never brought up again.
Personally, I think Shadowrun Returns had the best story because it was focused: it knew where it wanted to go and it knew how to pace itself without getting sidetracked. You weren’t sneaking into a warehouse because you’re being paid (unless you role-play that way); you were doing it because you were trying to track down a serial killer. You weren’t just breaking into a random corporation; you were doing it because they had the weapons you needed to fight your enemy. With the sequels, you’re getting invested in the narrative, learning about this huge conspiracy, when suddenly you have to put that on hold in order to rob a museum that has no bearing on future events. Heck, talking to random people in the hub has a bigger chance of affecting which ending you get than half of the actual missions (source: dev commentary).
Minor spoilers (click to show)
Hard Landing: It does a pretty good job of introducing the characters and combat mechanics. Both of the characters that had reactions to the Call to Action had believable reactions (the decker was just like "hey, look at this").
City of Darkness: This (along with things your team members say afterward) is supposed to establish your fixer's reputation, but it kinda falls flat when you realize that, no matter how you role-play, none of it amounts to anything. Three times she got angry with me, and three times she never had me killed nor had my body dumped in the water. "Oh, you wanted us to botch the mission? Okay, I'll be sure to botch the next one, too! ☺"
The Dig: If "a character being teleported to an empty room after being attacked by a mummy, forcing said character to fight said mummy 1v1 and defeat it to teleport back to the main map" sounds completely random, don't worry, the devs agree with you and try to justify it in the dev commentary by citing an ability from the tabletop game. This mechanic also never shows up in the game again (it was gonna, but the devs decided against it).
DeckCon 2056: The devs celebrate how they were able to make a mission where you can get through it without firing a shot, and how they were able to construct a dialogue puzzle where you have to talk to two different people at once, but what they don't tell you is that the correct answer to a dialogue choice before said dialogue puzzle is locked behind a stat requirement, even though it's such an obvious response that it'll pop into your head before the dialogue choices display on screen, and of course, getting this one wrong (a.k.a. not choosing the one with a stat requirement) leads to a shootout. I remember Dragonfall did the same thing: the obvious choice for one of the dialogues (I don't remember what it was) is locked behind an "intelligence" stat, yet "unraveling a conspiracy between two gangs based on minimal circumstantial evidence during the trust mission for Dragonfall's decker" is given out as an unrestricted choice for any idiot to "figure out."
Oh, and the theme song for Knight-Kings of Lightninghold is re-purposed as elevator music, and it's just as out-of-place as it sounds.
Exit, Stage Left: The head chef sure goes from "I can't let you in there or I'll get fired" to "Hell yeah, go in there and do whatever you want" really quickly with little convincing. The vampire had a believable reaction after finding out why exactly you were hired to do this run, but when the entire point is to find black mail, I'd think that "Hey, I know you're giving shelter to a vampire; do what I want or I'll tell vampire hunters about her" would be sufficient (especially after hearing the vampire's backstory), but apparently the game expects me to make the vampire leave and makes every point to tell me that my client will be at a disadvantage with the vampire still there, but only after the run is over. It's like that part in Dragonfall where the whole reason you go to the manor is to kill the dragon but if you actually do that, all of a sudden people are like "Why did you kill the dragon? That wasn't a good thing to do" and I'm just like "MAKE UP YOUR FREAKING MIND ALREADY!"
Misdirection: The most noteworthy part of this mission is that you encounter other shadowrunners. The encounters don't lead to anything unique other than "you get four AI-controlled ally characters," though.
Bad Qi: "Okay, we need to make subtle alterations on this floor in order to disrupt the flow of Qi, so let's move this cubicle wall half-way across the room! Nobody will notice that!" Before you respond: this isn't a choice; it's an icon (and it just says "Qi point"), and you don't get penalized for being too obvious, despite what the mission briefing may lead you to believe. In fact, you have to do it to reach the optional objective of "100% disruption."
The Sinking Ship: You might think starting a mutiny would mean you'd have more allies, but no, it's just another optional "talk to people" objective, and when you sound the alarm for the mutiny, all the fighting happens off-screen in an area you can't go back to. It's like Superman said: "Over there has to stand for itself."
The Extraction: Oh yeah, this game has an overarching narrative! I forgot about that after six missions of meandering around. This also leads me to another issue I had with these games: post-mission dialogue from team mates can be out of whack, too. One of my team mates was like "You WILL take me on this mission!" and after the mission was over, said "Actually, you don't have to take me on that mission if you don't want to" and I was just like "dude, the mission is already over!" Dragonfall had a similar instance where I spoke to the Decker and he said "Yeah, I'm gonna rescue my old girlfriend!" and then I immediately talked to him again and got the dialogue for when he got back, even though neither of us moved.
Prosperity Tower: More like Exposition Tower, am I right? Up top! ✋
Okay, to be fair, everything makes sense within the narrative, but it just all gets dumped on you at once after this mission. Honestly, Dragonfall had a similar issue, with the revelation that the dragon hunter is the antagonist being so close to the end that it doesn't have much time to build up to his biological weapon; it just gets info-dumped on you at the end.
The Fortune Engine: Similar to the last game, the ending is based mostly on a binary choice you make with the final boss. The dev commentary claims that your previous actions affect what happens during the final mission, but they also let slip that it's only if you go a very specific route with said choices: you can't just spare that character, you have to train the character as well, or you don't get your callback (and, of course, the other options you get for that character result in no change as well). The redemption ending is okay; it completes one of the character arcs, but you only learn the human antagonist's motivation and what the Fortune Engine was really made for through your team member's surprisingly accurate "speculation" and the epilogue blurb.
Also, am I the only one who thinks that "otherworldly entities with unknowable amounts of power that treat humanity like cattle/insects" make for uninteresting antagonists?
It does! Thanks :)
I honestly don’t remember it being that hard (played it on highest difficulty), or having less chance to hit than previous games, but I do agree some fights were unfair, often needing to prepare before hand after failing once or twice. You say that the cover system sucks, but I think positioning is a good mechanic to put in games like this. Bad positioning kills you and good positioning gives you an edge, along with upgrading your guns and spells and saving consumables for tough fights. There is a very useful spell that let’s you control enemy summons, which becomes important late game, I think. One thing of note, I never noticed dragon lines until my second playthrough, and even then I never used them/tried to keep enemies off them, so maybe I had extremely good luck or it was bad luck on your side. I also never needed to wait until the alarm lowered, but I guess the hardest difficulty throws you more enemies so you’ll likely finish the hacking part before dealing with enemies, specially considering you have one teammate less.
You’re right; as I said, the Geomantic Sabotage mission was the only one I played that required a different approach (because the summon was on the other side of the map). Everything else was just as dull, boring, and repetitive as the last two games, with the hit chance being the only reason your team members would lose more than half their health. Like I said, the closest the game gets to having any strategic options in combat, any real challenge at all, is if you want to lower the alarm state instead of just brute-forcing your way towards your objective. Other than that, it’s just “get in range, spam attacks, sometimes use healing spells, win, repeat”; you don’t even need items all that often. Honestly, that lack of difficulty is the main reason I don’t recommend it; I just didn’t think to mention it again since I played and made posts about the last two games not too long ago. Sorry if I didn’t make this post all that clear.
I will say, the hit chances are at their worst during the first mission, but it still isn’t uncommon for your best chance for everyone else to fall to 70-60%, even after getting at point-blank range.
I would agree with you if the positioning mechanic made much difference, but no, it just alters percent chances by an unstated amount (the alternative is that it does nothing, which was what I thought at first).
I think you’ll like Tyranny, I was surprised how much positioning factored in, and multiple ways of arranging your team yields different results, but it’s more about setting up choke points, flanking enemies and the like. As a disclaimer, I didn’t play it that much, probably didn’t even make it halfway yet, and played it on the hardest difficulty.
Oh wow, I wasn’t expecting a recommendation! Thanks! I do have some concerns: the combat is described as “real-time-with-pause,” and after playing games like Starcraft, Spellforce II, Starpoint Gemeni 2, and even Total War: Shogun 2, I think I can safely say that I’m not a fan of the RTS genre; it always seemed like either you have no time to think of your strategy (especially if you’re blindsided due to fog of war), or you’re just sitting there waiting for said strategy to play out. This is in complete contrast to turn-based games, where you have as much time as you want to think of what to do, but once you do it, it’s done (save for a few seconds of animation). I guess what I’m trying to ask is “does the combat have a turn-based option, or would I have to pause, plan, unpause, wait, repeat?”
It doesn’t help that the description barely gives lip service to said combat (which, in my experience, isn’t a good sign), instead selling the game on world-building and player choice.
It’s not exactly an RTS, but it’s not turn based either. I believe the real time is just for the lower difficulties, they wanted to make strategy more straightforward for people that wanted to enjoy the story is my guess, in the higher difficulties it will play almost like a turn based game, so yeah, plenty of pausing and issuing orders. Obsidian is an RPG developer, that is what they’re known for so it figures that’s what they would publicize, and it’s true that combat is usually less polished than the story elements. That said, Tyranny has by far the best combat of any of their games. I’m a fan of RPGs, so you should probably take my recommendation lightly, but the gameplay stumped me enough that I couldn’t figure out how to continue, so I’d say it’s complex enough in my book.
If you’re a strategy fan it might not impress you, but I’d think it’s good enough to wipe the bad taste the Shadowrun series left you.
Finally got around to playing Tyranny (it going free on Epic didn’t leave me much choice, lol), and I have to say: I really don’t see what you meant about it not exactly being an RTS. Not only is combat very much an RTS, but it’s so slow! Even basic attacks have a 2-3 second delay between each one, and I swear, special attacks take even longer to happen (and this is after you’ve selected the power and clicked on a target, after its cooldown is done!). And after all that waiting? Your attack can still miss by chance. I think that might help explain why the combat gave you so much trouble.
But the main reason I don’t want to play that game anymore is how dialogue-heavy it is. In my 7-hours-and-30-minutes of playing, only around 30 minutes of that was combat, with the other 7 hours just being dialogue. Example: After reading the Edict near the start of the game, I took the first Disfavored mission (retake the bridge) and I got “ambushed” on my way there. At first, I was like “cool, combat!” but nope; it was the Tide Mage asking for a prisoner exchange. After that, I make it to the bridge, and now I have to deal with an argument between the two rival generals about tactics and their previous failed attempt. After that’s resolved, now we get combat, right? Not really; just fight two basic units, and then the opposing general raises the drawbridge and starts talking to you. After that, we can cross the other bridge and finally have a more serious fight (which is still only around 4 or 5 units, only one of which has any noticeable special abilities), but after that? Another dialogue box with the opposing commander. Sure, I had the option to end it immediately and keep attacking, but it’s pretty clear where the game’s priorities are.
Honestly, I kinda prefer the Shadowrun Returns trilogy over this one.
That was 3 years ago, I’ve since finished it several times and got over the supposedly complicated early game “strategic” difficulty, which I somewhat stand by, you have to plan and make due with the restrictions and challenges you are given, but I meant exactly what I said: in the higher difficulties it will play almost like a turn based game, so yeah, plenty of pausing and issuing orders.
Slow fights must be a factor I’m more used to than you in this types of games. As I stressed several times, I’m a fan of RPGS, like fallout or baldurs’ gate. That said, everything goes out the window the further in the game you are, combat does become somewhat of a chore because of how overpowered you are, but there are still some strategic choices involved. Mainly it’s about the heavy reading as you described, because again, I really like rpgs, and that is what this game is. Obsidian is an RPG developer, that is what they’re known for so it figures that’s what they would publicize, and it’s true that combat is usually less polished than the story elements. That said, Tyranny has by far the best combat of any of their games.
As I recall Shadowrun is also dialogue and choices heavy, albeit not as much as the beast that is Tyranny (I don’t recall the game as you experienced (7 hours of dialogue and only 30 minutes of combat?! I spent a lot of time on combat, probably because I had more difficulties grasping it than you)), and at the time I thought Tyranny had a strategic edge, so I thought maybe you would enjoy it more. Perfectly fair that you prefer Shadowrun to Tyranny, I recommended it to close the gap from RTS to RPG a bit for you, and you didn’t enjoy it, sorry about that. Being honest here, I also prefer Shadowrun to Tyranny, although I like both very much.