Shadowrun: Hong Kong updates with free 6+ hour bonus campaign.

[mauve]

Just opened my Steam account and noticed that my copy of Shadowrun: Hong Kong is now called Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition. In addition to a 666.9 (gasp!) MB download size, this apparently adds bug fixes as well as a six-plus hour additional campaign which takes place shortly after the events of Hong Kong. Anyone who previously owned the game gets this for free, much like Dragonfall's upgrade.

Wow. I really gotta hand it to Harebrained Schemes-- they put a lot of effort into what amounts to free storyline DLC for the majority of players. And right in the middle of a Steam sale, too! I know I said Hong Kong wasn't as good as Dragonfall, but I still really enjoyed it and am looking forward to seeing if this bonus campaign answers any of the questions the game left hanging at the end of the original story.

I also hope I can import my last character, because she was a magical murder machine. Troll mage is surprisingly effective in spite of having a lower cap for spellcasting than the other races. She's not a glass cannon-- She's a tank with a flamethrower taped to it.

[mauve]

Wow, ten minutes into the bonus campaign and the "who recalled the APB on the team" question is already answered. I think I would've gone much easier on Hong Kong had I known there would be a "sequel" that links directly to the story's loose ends.

[Overcast]

Keep it up I have yet to dive in as I'm concentrating on other parts of my backlog but am interested.

[mauve]

I'm enjoying it so far. You can only play the bonus campaign after finishing the base campaign, so don't delete your end-of-game savefiles. It expects you to import your original character, so I was happy to do so.

[mauve]

Finished it. It was a little disappointing-- again, it felt like the devs had a lot planned for it but only were able to implement a few things. There were TWO large hub worlds with plenty of NPCs to interact with, but really no purpose for any of it. NPCs were introduced and then never mentioned again. The second hub zone, which is impressively large, is explored once. Just once. It literally just exists to make you click more tiles so you walk farther. The entire DLC consists of two sidequests and three story missions, and even after exploring every level rather thoroughly I think that the advertised "6 hours of gameplay" is a bit of a stretch.

The biggest sin though was that the final minutes drops what is supposed to be a huge decision on you about your team's future, but it really didn't feel incredibly well developed. It just felt kind of forced. I went with what I thought was the logical choice for my character, and in rapid-fire procession it skewered Duncan's character development from both the main game and this DLC, immediately washed its hands of its own supposed emotional impact of said choice, and then informed me that pretty much everything I did will end up being rendered useless in about ten in-game years anyway. Well gee, that sure makes me feel like I didn't waste time doing this. Granted, Dragonfall did the same thing by explaining the fall of the Flux State in the years after the game, but two games in a row with the same "Too bad you're just a single person in a horrible, horrible world: All the progress you made was useless in the end" shtick makes me wonder why anyone bothers doing ANYTHING in the Sixth World.

Mechanically, the DLC is about the same as the base game. Item handling seemed to be better managed, as the weapons and medkits I gave my companions were less likely to magically disappear after missions. Loading times seemed longer than usual and I'm not sure why.

Your team still hangs out in their same spots on your ship, and there's a tiny bit of the "downtime character development" going on between missions should you choose to chat them up. These don't really end up going anywhere or contributing to anything, unfortunately-- most just abruptly end without any conclusions, as though the characters just sort of forgot about what they were doing (Same goes with the discussions on the Shadowlands BBS. Several of the amusing themes from the main game, like the unfortunate runner constantly seeking new teams and the Haiku-writing rogue AI, do make cameos however). Additionally, there were no new perks or leveling for your companions and as a result they all seemed underpowered even at max level.

On the plus side, my troll mage still kicked ass and she ended up in a weird Vash the Stampede coat.