Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Review @ Mortismal Gaming

I would play this again if they Kickstarted a fully-voiced addition. I wonder how much they'd have to ask for?
 
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I just got the the "idea" from Urtuk, where enemies are hacked apart into a livid geyser of gore with internal organs, jaws and heads flying around in beautiful arcs! If Shadowrun did that, hmm.. I would play the game. But they should have as good screams as in Urtuk!
 
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Kick starting is a different beast these days, though if any company could make a good go of it, this one stands in those ranks. Should that ever happen I'd be hoping for a new game though, perhaps the start of another marvelous trilogy/series!
 
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They're no longer an indie company as they got bought out by Paradox.
They should have been bought by Microsoft since it owns the rights to BattleTech and Shadowrun but either way they should have lots of development money from Paradox so no need to Kickstarter anymore.
 
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I would play this again if they Kickstarted a fully-voiced addition. I wonder how much they'd have to ask for?

A lot of nuyen because there's a huge amount of text in the game if you talk to every NPC. Personally I wouldn't want to sit and listen to the long personal stories of the merchants (which were huge walls of text that should've been abridged IMO).

There's some other features which were cut from Shadowrun Returns that I'd much rather have than VA. In the original pitch the awakened characters were supposed to have their own special ways of interacting with the world:

"Mages see magical auras, granting them the ability to locate magical items, identify spells being prepared, and find the intersections of magic lay lines where they can recharge their power." Only the lay line part of this was ever implemented.

"Shaman see the 'true world' that lies in the astral plane, distinguishing the true nature of people, plants, creatures, and magical objects while buildings and other 'dead' objects appear as mere shadows." -- all shamans ever got was they can summon a spirit in certain levels and an occasional special dialogue option for them. An astral plane version of a every level would've been wiz, (but surely a lot of work to implement).

I also would've really loved a proper stealth system. Returns actually had a few vestiges of a stealth system (silenced firearms and certain stealthy spells) that were never properly implemented.

Don't expect any further updates to the HBS games, but I hope they'll expand on the unique abilities for archetypes for the next SR cRPG (if there is one I'm guessing it will be made by inXile or Obsidian though).
 
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There's some other features which were cut from Shadowrun Returns that I'd much rather have than VA. In the original pitch the awakened characters were supposed to have their own special ways of interacting with the world:

Wow never realized theses things were cut from the game, as much as I love this series, that content would have put it over the top..

Here's hoping someone takes the ball and runs with this franchise..
 
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Wow never realized theses things were cut from the game, as much as I love this series, that content would have put it over the top..

Here's hoping someone takes the ball and runs with this franchise..

Yep, though originally SRR was planned to be a simpler top down mobile game with a possible PC port. They turned it into a isometric PC game with mobile ports. So it did get a significant upgrade in graphics (and probably gameplay), but I wish they would've ditched the mobile plans completely as I think the hardware limitations of tablets held the game back. SRHK was PC exclusive, but by then the damage was done (most noticeably in the UI).

I had Returns on my tablet which was neat but there was no way to even play any of the user made content… and both Returns & Dragonfall were eventually removed from the Google Play & iOS stores anyway.
 
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Yeah, I agree with you here @mbuddha; , actually for the reason @daveyd; already implied:

I think the first Shadowrun was a bit rough and basic. It worked, but it didn't really feel thought-through.
Dragonfall, the second game, then worked quite well, basically improved the issues of the first game.
Hong Kong unfortunately then went all out with obsolete walls of text. Reading is ok. But unlike other games it felt like in Hong Kong, 90% of the text is Fluff, completely irrelevant to gameplay or the actual story within the game, but you were supposed to read everything because now and then some character bonuses were hidden in there. If you just want to read about the Shadowrun world, and are interested about the backstory of every fisherman, even though you got no part in that, then Hong Kong is ok, otherwise I'd recommend to skip it / play Dragonfall instead if you havent.
 
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