Without going into spoiling specifics, I noticed an interesting difference in this campaign, compared to the others. Note that I'm not even half-way through HK.

In all of the campaigns you get far more runs than you complete, so they stack up (on proof-reading this it sounds unclear to me. What I mean is that while you complete the runs one at a time, you receive several new ones between each run. So - until some point in the future - you have a steadily increasing backlog of runs to do). Many of the runs are described as, one way or another, time-sensitive. Prior to HK you could pretty much ignore the "hurry up" part of the run description and just do them in an order that made sense to you. Well in HK they've got at least one mission that if you don't do it as soon as you hear about it, it disappears (with a snotty message from the one who wants it done).

I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, it seems a little more realistic. On the other, it seems like cheating on their part. There's no way for the player to tell between cases where they are just trying to hype you and cases where they really mean what they tell you.

Thoughts?

What was the missable run? I must have accidentally completed it on time because no client ever cancelled the job because I was late. But I did find it uncomfortable to finish one run and find another two or three piling up on my computer. There were also follower sidequests to contend with. In the end I figured that, while the game treated completing a run and/or going to sleep as one day, it never counted days.

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The request from Bao.

Hmm, I think I know what you're referring to. Does it concern Maximum Law? It's not a proper run, but rather a sidequest that can be resolved in a single dialogue, and which decides the fate of a single NPC. Other than that, I encountered no time limits. I took my sweet time with most of the quests.

Well, I don't know the details of it because I did not go right away to discuss the sidequest. When I came back from my next run, there was a mean letter from him in my inbox. And that's all the info I received (except for some stuff that was broken - leftover dialog with Max that I did not understand - thanks for clearing up that mystery).

Same here, I encountered no time limits either.

I think that apart from the Maximum Law issue, the only requirement to be able to do the runs is to ensure that they're finished before a certain mission in the game - but it's clearly stated which mission this is. In other words, it's pretty similar to Dragonfall in that way.

Except what I liked about Dragonfall was that for the most part, you were told in advance how much you were going to get paid for each mission overall, and then you got a percentage of that (detailed in the breakdown) for the "main" missions. Here we're only told we'll get a bonus if we do certain things, but nothing to quantify how big that bonus will be or even what the base pay is.

We also don't know how much goes to other runners/expenses, but I guess Kindly doesn't our character to know the full details...

There's only one mission I've noticed because I got the e-mail for it.

I think I'm probably at least 3/4ths of the way through because my companions are at level 5 and I got the +1 AP. That usually signals towards the end of the game.

There's a lot more to do in these missions I think. The previous versions you basically just power through everything with fights. In this campaign there's a lot more talking and investigation and stuff, which I rather like.

The Matrix stuff is a little better now but not necessarily something you want to do too much of. But definitely it seems it really makes most missions pretty easy. I might play a decker next time and just not take Is0bel with me, but she's a pretty solid character overall.

I don't use the Shaman or the Rigger too much.

I'm sure future patches will add more content like with Dragonfall. But it seems like there's a good chunk already there. I might set it aside for a little while before replaying though. I was a bit worried about bugs but it hasn't been much of an issue. Maybe 1 or 2 optional objectives I couldn't do but that's about it.

I don't have the game, so no spoilers please, but what are people's general impressions?

Better than Dragonfall? Worse? Is the writing solid? (I assume so.) Did they make weapons any more interesting? Are there lots of opportunities to use skills in conversations?

This is tricky to answer as it comes down to personal taste.

The TL;DR version to your questions, in order: No, maybe (but still good), yes, some of them, yes. ;)

Detailed response:

IMO, generally, the writing was on par (barring the many spelling and grammar mistakes) with Dragonfall. There are a few more weapons - not a lot, but a few extra swords and guns, including some cool unique items. Adept has improved spells to boot. Other spells tweaked/moved around a bit - nothing too dramatic there. More chrome, including some kick-ass cyber weapons. Added "cyber affinity" stat, which allows adding chrome with reduced essence loss (can in theory add a small amount of chrome to a magic char without sacrifice if you put enough points in this). Also more cyber decks, more programs, nicer looking matrix.

Most importantly - it's now possible to actually manage your team's inventory! As in, during a mission, you can actually swap items between your characters! No more just sending everything you can't use straight to the stash.

Unfortunately, they changed the way the matrix works - and they stuffed it up in my opinion. Lame real-time mode, lame puzzles that are as repetitive as they're lacking in challenge, with decker skills not even coming into that part of it. Matrix combat (when it happens) is still similar to before though.

They also screwed with Shaman summoning - shrine spirits now get 4 AP every turn and don't break free - until the end of their second turn, when they always break free.

Combat feels much easier than Dragonfall - possibly because there's no "very hard" mode just yet (but it's coming apparently). The AI seems a bit crap so far, your companions get pretty strong pretty fast, and the fights in general don't seem that interesting. Nothing as crazy as the APEX mission that's for sure.

Personally I also thought that while the writing was generally solid, the missions were too short while the amount of pointless crap to talk about in the hub was probably going a bit far. Missions were also nowhere near as memorable as Dragonfall's in my view, with the possible exception of one where you encounter other runners (which is kind of cool). On top of that, not as much stuff to find (paydata, additional cyber, etc), and the mission pay is crazily low for some reason.

Bottom line: If you liked Dragonfall, you'll most likely enjoy this and should probably get it. Mechanically, the improvements likely outweigh the negative things introduced, and I suspect most of those will get patched/changed eventually. Plot-wise and mission design aren't up there with Dragonfall, but they're still good fun overall.

Thanks for the detailed response! Shame about the matrix, I don't like when things get all real-timey and without connection to the skills. Not what I'm looking for in an isometric, story-driven rpg.

The inventory swapping sounds nice and the pointless stuff to talk about might be interesting. Depends on how good the back story is for Hong Kong I suppose. I'll probably also enjoy playing with the new Cyber Affinity skill.

Seems solid. I think I'm almost guaranteed to play Hong Kong, I just don't have a lot of time/cash right now.

I think Hong Kong is well worth the current price. I see squid830 wrote some valid points above; I'm just going to add that I personally liked all the runs because of their variety. In the previous Shadowruns there were stealth runs, but they always added combat with waves of enemies, which felt really artificial, tacked-on. In HK there are combat-heavy runs, and then there are runs you can complete without ever entering combat mode (except maybe in the Matrix), provided you picked the right skills and etiquettes. And there's one almost purely stealth run. Storywise, runs are also different in that the objectives are much more varied. You'll be kidnapping persons, disrupting a Feng Shui furniture layout, crashing a party, robbing a museum etc.

As for shaman summoning, let me just add that, while shrine spirits (those summoned from the environment) are unsummoned automatically after their second turn, spirits summoned from elemental fetishes behave the same as in the previous games, the only difference being in that they get two "freebie" turns (no chance to break free).

And yes, there's too much text in this game, which is normally a great thing in an RPG, but here each minor NPC goes on and on about their problems, dreams, hopes and aspirations. And everybody in Heoi is super nice to you, like one big friendly community, which takes quite a bit away from the cyberpunk noir feeling.

Adding to the above, one of the things they did right in my view was the varied ways you could go about missions, which included a lot more ways to avoid (meat-world) combat altogether. I think that I managed to avoid combat entirely in at least three of the missions, and in the remainder most of the combat was in one or two battles at the end.

I don't know why but the missions seemed shorter than in Dragonfall somehow. I suspect that they only FEEL shorter because of the massive text dumps heaped on us in-between missions.

Also despite the variety, they weren't as memorable as the ones in DF for the most part. I can't put my finger on it, but they were missing a certain... something... that could have set them apart. Still enjoyable though.

I did like meeting other runners in the club, and even though I started getting tired of their stories, I started hoping they'd show up in larger groups and not just one at a time. This was still an improvement over DF, even if I'll probably never hire them (as if I'd spend N450 with mission payouts what they are).

Also the banter from your runners during missions appears to be more unique this time - each one usually has a different way of phrasing things and/or a different perspective, which is more noticeable and personal than in DF.

Yep, money is really tight in this game, they should either lower the prices of goods or increase run payouts in a patch. I played a decker and barely had enough money for three deck upgrades, two armor upgrades and a mid-range weapon. Oh, and a few low-end pieces of cyberware. I purchased no consumables whatsoever and refrained from upgrading my companions' equipment. I only spent a few hundred nuyen in dialogues during runs. In the end I had to resort to selling every medkit I found during runs to pay for the next deck upgrade. I imagine mages have a much tougher time, seeing as they have to buy expensive spells to be effective.

After the final mission you get 5,000 nuyen, just minutes before endgame. I suppose that's the game's way of trolling players.

Actually, a better way to solve the problem would be to make the best gear available a few missions earlier. That way you could avoid quite so many upgrades. If you had upgraded to the best deck on your second upgrade instead of your third it would have saved you a few thousand nuyen.