If you remember my Shadowrun Returns review, you might be wondering why I've skipped reviewing Dragonfall to do the latest game in the series. That's a sad tale that goes back to when Dragonfall was just an expansion tied to the original Returns. Dragonfall received a Director's Cut update where it became its own title, and the ties between the original were severed. When this happened, I lost all of my saves. Putting these files in the cloud may have prevented this, but I was unaware this would be an issue before the event happened, and don't trust the cloud in general. I've started another play, and I'm a bit over halfway to where I was, but Hong Kong came out and was fresh. It was not content I've already blasted through before, so the allure to play it was much stronger.



Hong Kong is a much different setting than the two that were released beforehand, Seattle and Berlin respectively. Western ideals and philosophies were at the cornerstone of design for those two settings, while everything is flipped to the Far East for Hong Kong. It all makes sense given the island's history and how the world of Shadowrun itself is designed. All runners enjoy being able to have a safe house where they can hide from private security and police squads, as well as government funded police, so there is no better place than the various slums of Hong Kong.


The worst of all the slums is a place called Kowloon Walled City, and it is completely real in our world. It also looks hideous in both representations of the area. The game has you staying nearby in Heoi, where you feel the effects of a great, evil presence behind the wall. All of this is wrapped around an extremely powerful and compelling cast of characters. Everything is tied around the idea of each character's past. The main story starts with your main character's father running off to finish something haunting him from his past, and the theme permeates throughout your party.

The NPCs that spend their days sharing Heoi with your group of brothers and locals are incredibly interesting, as digging into their backstories reveals more hints at some parts of the world that have yet to be visited by the new series of games. This cast is likely the best yet, as you feel rewarded for digging into their muddy pasts. The real stars of the game are your party members, as they're likely the most interesting ones written in the new Shadowrun series.


Sadly, not everything in the game can be said to be an improvement. The Matrix has real time stealth elements that transition into turn-based combat if you're seen, and this is an upgrade compared to the system running in the previous two games. The overall design of the main story and the reasons to run in the shadows is lacking compared to Dragonfall. Everyone had something personal at stake for running in Dragonfall, while in Hong Kong, some characters are forced into their situation, and others do so entirely of their freewill. The party is more loose, but the individual personalities raise the experience much higher.

The main story involves a lot of sitting and waiting to get new information from the well-connected fixer who assigns your team jobs and also inquires about the events and characters to push the main story into motion. There are large gaps between bits of information that span across multiple runs, so you're largely left in the dark while you're desperately scrounging up enough money to properly outfit your main character. All of the side runs also feel shorter, and there are fewer of them than in Dragonfall. The other main problem I experienced was typos, and there were a lot of them. The game could have used one last big editing session before release, but hopefully these are fixed quickly now that the general public has access to everything in the game.

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