daveyd
Sep 5, 2017

Shadowrun: Hong Kong review
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Great atmosphere and characters, Very little filler content. Shadowrun setting is a refreshing change of pace from the typical medieval fantasy of most RPGs.

Combat can become too easy as your team progresses. The new minigames are more of an annoyance than an improvement.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong is Harebrained Schemes' latest Kickstarter-funded RPG set in the Shadowrun universe. Your character is a Seattle resident with a troubled past who travels to Hong Kong after receiving a distressed phone message from your estranged foster father. As anyone who has played a previous Shadowrun game can guess, before long you find yourself getting sucked into the dangerous, yet exciting underworld of shadowrunning- working for and against megacorps for money, information, and sometimes personal reasons.

Like SR: Dragonfall the game quickly throws you into the action. There's little filler content like fetch quests or hordes of random enemies. Even the optional side quests are complex and interesting. Another thing I really appreciate is that it is possible through use of Character skills, Charisma-based "etiquette", hacking and occasionally disguises to avoid most, if not all combat during many missions. Also, which companions you choose to take along may also affect the ways you approach a mission. For instance, Gaichu the samurai ghoul's horrific appearance may terrify security guards, making for a rather humorous way to get past them. Or perhaps Rachter the rigger will use his extensive knowledge of robotics to help you bluff your way into a tech facility.

SR: HK introduces a rudimentary stealth system as you can now toggle into turn-based mode before your group has been noticed by hostiles. This is mostly useful for ambushing your enemies, but you can occasionally bypass them altogether. As there is no Karma (i.e., XP) awarded for combat and usually no loot, there's not much downside to avoiding combat if you want to play it sneaky.

The combat hasn't changed much from SR: Dragonfall Director's Cut. It is turn-based tactical combat that uses a simple action point system- attacks use 1 AP, with some more powerful spells and abilities requiring 2. Cover and positioning is important. It is pretty solid if you like turn-based, but certainly not perfect. The enemy AI is not always very smart and non-boss enemies are set to attack only once per round. Between magic, spirit summoning, firearms, melee, and cybernetic weapons you have a wide range of tactics to choose from. Unfortunately, the enemies seldom force you to think carefully.

While the early game battles can be a bit challenging, I soon found it got too easy even on the highest difficulty setting. With a few exceptions, the only ways to make combat challenging for experienced tacticians are to either not take along as many companions as you're allowed to on missions (normally 3) or deliberately build your own character to lack combat skills. Since you'll probably want to see each companion's unique dialogue and may want to use their non-combat skills, the former isn't really a good option. The best advice I can offer to those who enjoy challenging tactical combat is to avoid bringing along any DocWagon Trauma kits, which allow you to bring back character's from unconsciousness.



The writing is one of Shadowrun Hong Kong's biggest strengths. The characters are very well developed and you'll have a chance to get to know your teammates through conversation. In fact, even the shopkeepers and other NPCs have fairly detailed backstories. However, be warned that they can get very lengthy and might sometimes qualify as "wall of text". I personally love having lots of dialogue in my RPGs, but even I found the huge amount of flavor text tedious at times.

The most noticeable difference between SR: HK and it's predessecors is the changes HBS made to the Matrix. Apparently the Matrix was one of the most critcized aspects of HBS' previous Shadowrun games as many players found it too similar to "meatspace" combat,so they made a Matrix revamp one of the stretch goals. While it wasn't perfect, I thought the Matrix in Dragonfall was pretty good and I was disappointed with the "new and improved" version. On the one-hand, the visual changes look great. Instead of a merely being a generic Tron-like cyberspace, a corporation's Matrix system now features unique set pieces. However, they added some twitch based stealth mechanics and minigames that I don't really care for.

When your decker jacks in during a mission you'll initially begin moving around the Matrix map trying to sneak past "Watcher IC". If they spot you it raises the alarm rating and if this gets beyond a certain threshold you'll be attacked by hostile IC- which makes it simliar to the combat-focused Matrix of the previous SR games. While this sounded great in theory, I found that the fixed isometric perspective often made it difficult to avoid getting detected. A player with impeccable timing and sufficient patience might be able to masterfully sneak past the Watcher IC, but I tended to find it a frustrating crap shoot.

Anyway, assuming the Matrix alarm hasn't gone off, once your decker reaches a node that you want to hack (to access valuable paydata or possible hack the building's security cameras, turret system, elevators, etc.) you will have to play the hacking minigame, unless you've already found the node's passcode. The minigame consists of two parts. The first part is basically like the electronic memory game "Simon", but with a numpad instead of colors. The second part is another memory game where you have to correctly match a string of rune-like symbols as the flash on top of the screen. The more rounds of numerical "Simon" you successfully complete, the easier the rune matching will be. You need match the symbols before a timer runs out (with each incorrect guess causing the timer to advance more quickly) or you'll raise the alert level. Again once the alarm goes off, it becomes all about cyber combat.

Although the hacking minigames aren't all that difficult if you pay attention, they can get rather tedious after awhile. However, the biggest issue I have with SR:HK revamped Matrix is this: in an RPG where character skills generally matter a lot in combat and dialogue, the new Matrix relies far more on player skill. It is technically possible for a player character with only one point in "Decking" skill to do really well at hacking if they have awesome twitch skills and the patience to do the minigames. On the flip side, a player who is exceptionally bad at the minigames may need to invest more heavily in the Decking and "ESP Control" skills because they will inevitably end up in Matrix combat. Of course this is only an issue for players who want to be roleplay as a Decker; otherwise you can just take along Is0bel, who is a pretty skilled Decker companion.

All in all Shadowrun Hong Kong is a great game and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes RPGs. The combat isn't nearly as challenging as i would have liked and I wasn't crazy about all of the so-called improvements made to this installment of the Shadowrun series. Nevertheless I found SR: HK to be one of the most enjoyable RPGs released in the past few years.