Time for all the mirrorshades, awkward slang and anachronistic future technology that your chrome-augmented body can handle; its cyberpunk hour with Shadowrun: Hong Kong! I’ve been playing this Harebrained Schemes joint for the better part of the week and, despite a wealth of scripting bugs, I am enjoying the hell out of it. Let’s journey through the shadows, shall we?
Shadowrun: Hong Kong is based on the tabletop game that essentially is one big stew of all things science fiction, folk tales and traditional fantasy served up in a delicious bread bowl of terribly outdated 80s cyberpunk. The setting is that of a not-too-distant future where corporations run rampant and magic has returned to the world. You typically play as the eponymous shadowrunners, marginalized people who live off the grid and eke out a living by carrying out shady jobs for corporations and individuals. Campaigns have your team of humans, elves, dwarves, orcs and other species use whatever skills they have to finish the job. These skills can be anything from smooth talking and hacking to firearms and magic spells. It’s a crazy universe and I’ve barely scratched the surface of the lore. I recommend checking out the Shadowrun wiki if you’re interested in losing track of the next couple of hours.
Despite the re-brand this is essentially the third campaign in the Shadowrun Returns system and so folks who have played Dead Man’s Switch or Dragonfall should be able pick up Hong Kong’s mechanics in no time. You start with a new character for the campaign that you will need to spec out as you would in most other WRPGs. From there it is on to an intriguing opening where you return to Hong Kong after many years away, only to discover the father figure who beckoned you back is either dead or missing. At this point an ambush kills several friendly shadowrunners who met you at the dock. You quickly become ensconced in the seedy underbelly of the harbor city's criminal elements trying to sort out what went wrong. In that time you will take on jobs from various factions and do the usual money/XP grind. You will hack, manipulate, lie steal and engage in some X-COM-style turn-based combat as you gain infamy in the shadows. This is all buoyed by some fantastic writing that expertly straddles the line between compelling and cheesy, with only occasional forays into verbosity.
There have been some noticeable improvements that help differentiate Shadowrun: Hong Kong from previous campaigns. For starters the game as a whole looks sharper and more detailed, likely owing to the fact that Harebrained Schemes opted out of making a tablet version. The other major improvement is the overhauled hacking system (known as “decking” in Shadowrun parlance). Previous instances of decking involved you entering a computer world, which essentially played like the normal world except with tedious and slow combat. The developers wisely expanded the system to include a stealth system and a hacking minigame that provides more options on how you navigate the matrix. The combat is still there, but only if you want to engage with it.
I’ve so far put about 10 hours into the campaign and it feels like I’m getting close to the endgame. My team has finished all of its side jobs and the only mission left to me comes with an ominous “there’s no going back” warning that screams final dungeon. I’ve been cruising on easy difficulty so you may be able to wring more hours out of the game if you aren’t a wuss like me. Unfortunately I’ve run into about a half dozen mission critical scripting bugs in that time. Some simply required a reload but other bugs had me restarting a mission that took me upwards of 30 minutes to complete. Hopefully we will see a patch fix these issues, but in the meantime, I recommend that you save early and often (and don’t try and touch mission objectives while in combat!). Despite these bugs I can give this a hearty recommendation for fans of the series and newcomers alike. See you in the shadows, chummer.
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