Which one have you enjoyed the most and why?
I personally liked Shadowrun Returns, REALLY liked Dragonfall,
and just bought Hong Kong. Does it live up to the standard Dragonfall set?
Is it better? is it worse?
What's your opinion?

In my opinion:

- graphically it's a HUGE improvement. You'll really notice the difference.
- Music-wise, I thought Dragonfall had better tracks. Personal preference purely.
- Gameplay mechanics wise, they've added a ton of cool things, especially in the cyberwear area.
- Gameplay/plot wise, IMO it doesn't live up to Dragonfall, but it's still better than Dead Man's Switch. Similar mission structure to Dragonfall (central hub, missions recorded on computer, etc.), but in my view there's too much dialog in the "hub" so the missions feel like they're too short. There is good mission variety - I won't spoil it, but definitely interesting - but for some reason overall the missions and hub didn't grab me like they did in Dragonfall. The dialog in the hub is purely optional for the most part, so at least you don't have to read/listen to all of it.
- Though you get way more goodies, you also get much less in the way of cash to spend on them. Which on the one hand makes it more challenging, but can be annoying if you were expecting the vast amounts of cash you got by the end of Dragonfall.

In my opinion, Hong Kong is a step forward, but in the wrong direction. I wasn't completely blown away by Dragonfall either, but I thought that it was a solid, turn-based RPG that was worth its price. I couldn't say the same about Hong Kong though, and even though my expectations weren't that high (I simply expected the same Dragonfall quality, with a slightly different setting) I really regretted my purchase. Conversations are way too lengthy and uninteresting, (Dragonfall suffered from that too, but in HK it just reached an unbearable limit for me) combat situations are not as varied or challenging as in Dragonfall, almost all of the companions are overpowered, the new Matrix is prettier, but the stealth gameplay in it is not fleshed-out and is a mess in its current state...and I could go on.

Since I don't mind the lengthier dialogues, I'd call it an improvement over Dragonfall in most respects. The mission variety is greater, the graphics are certainly better, and the new gameplay elements are generally good (though like many, I'm not a fan of the 'real time stealther' element that was added to the matrix). There's also a greater element of consequence to some of the things you do (or don't do).

The NPC allies are a bit more mixed - some of them have good personalities and/or writing while others (the dwarf decker) are rather shallow. There are a couple (won't spoil) that might have been gimmicky stereotypes (and to a point, are just that), but are really made by their presentation. They ARE definitely stronger than the Dragonfall ones, although I'm not sure that's a bad thing; you can take them knowing that they'll actually pull their weight, making a support-oriented PC a practical option.

IMHO Hong Kong is more or less tied with Dragonfall.

On the engine side, Hong Kong did several significant improvement (especially on inventory handling), added some nice new features in cyberware, ...

The new Matrix is a double-sided sword, I do like the hacking minigame and more diversity of ways they introduced, I don't like the "real-time" stealth part.

On the story/world/characters, I would say Dragonfall DC is slightly better than Hong Kong, but Hong Kong is still very good. Perhaps I'm a bit biased because I liked the concept of Flux State more the Hong Kong settings.

My take:

I liked SR returns a whole lot, really loved Dragonfall.
Really liked Hong Kong until came across the new matrix system, couldn't get over the changes and gave up.

I've been meaning to give it a new chance, but... haven't.
Currently doing fallout 4, then maybe back to hong kong, unless I rather retry Wasteland 2 or give Pillars of Eternity a go.

And this despite having replayed both Shadowrun and Dragonfall, No real pull back to hong kong.
I know matrix isn't the whole game and many like the new one, but.. wrecked the experience for me.

Oh yes, can't believe I forgot to add: they totally f*cked up the matrix, changing it from being similar to meat-space (except "Matrix-ey") to looking more "Matrix-ey" but adding completely retarded, inconsistent "stealth" mechanics and incredibly lame Simon/memory games.

The "stealth" in the Matrix is real-time and for some reason cannot be switched to turn-based mode, despite the fact that this SRR:HK introduced a mechanic allowing the player to manually switch between real-time and turn-based for the meat-space stealth sequences! That's face-palm-worthy logic right there.

But if you can get over that, and the ridiculous amount of boring dialog in the "hub" area (btw the first time I have EVER complained about a game having too much dialog), and the fact that combat in general is really easy compared to Dragonfall (for the most part) and generally not as interesting as it could have been - then you'll find a decent game underneath.

TL;DR - despite the above, I'd still rank it above Dead Man's Switch in terms of both mechanics and overall plot and mission variety, but below Dragonfall due to the above. So don't expect any mission in HK to be as entertaining as Blitz's buddy mission or that biotech retrieval mission (though there's a restaraunt mission that has its moments)...

My opinion is pretty much in line exactly with squid830.

Dragonfall: Director's Cut is still tops on nearly every level, except in the visuals department. I love the character model updates they made in Hong Kong.

My biggest complaint with Hong Kong is that I found it ridiculously easy on Hard, with a poor variety of enemies in nearly every scenario and lame boss fights. It desperately needs another difficulty mode and almost all combat scenarios need to be refined, which I hope they do with a Director's Cut.

Or when the mini-campaign comes out. Was supposed to be by end of this year apparently...

Yeah, I don't mind them taking a little longer to get it done. As long as it's awesome.

Agreed.

Hopefully they'll spend some time on mission structure, especially combat (more challenge/variety would be good).

They could also do with taking a good long look at how the Matrix currently works and come up with some improvements there - ideally it should feel "different" to standard meat-space combat, but without resorting to the lame mechanics they've introduced (i.e. get rid of the real-time stuff, get rid of the lame "hacking" mini-games and instead base success of hacking a node on skill + program used).

If hacking success were based more on skill, and if we could buy extra programs (or deck mods?) to bump this up and/or provide alternate ways through, that would go a long way to making Matrix runs both more interesting and different to the rest of the game.

Also one thing that bugged me about HK - I'm pretty sure that setting off an alarm in the Matrix rarely (or ever?) triggered a significant response - either within the Matrix or without. You'd think that apart from extra ICE (e.g. black ICE), there might on some levels be corporate deckers attempting to thwart you, plus you'd think that larger corps would set off a physical alarm (and possibly send security after you).

If anything, often setting off the alarm made things easier since you didn't have to deal with watchers any more. IMO it should work the opposite way - setting off an alarm should basically be a really bad thing that's to be avoided for as long as possible.

Haha yes in a lot of cases it's easier (and/or faster) to just set off the alarm, the first time i triggered the alarm I was shocked by that.

The matrix didn't bother me too much in HK, just very disappointing after the kickstarter hype.

Was that Blitz's story mission in Dragonfall where another decker comes after you at the end? Having the risk of that happening at any time would be amazing and something that should have defenitely been included with alarms.

Blitz's story mission design in general is better than anything matrix related in HK.

Yes that was Blitz's story. Totally agree Blitz's story was, both within and outside the Matrix, better than anything in HK - that Decker vs Decker battle at the end just added to what was already an interesting mission. The HK missions weren't anywhere near as memorable.

Likewise nothing in HK comes close to that Biotech retrieval mission - that has to be my favourite mission in the series so far.

I do like how you run into those other runners in that one HK mission, which made it a bit more interesting - but it still felt like it could have been so much more. Probably because it was so simple to get through the combat, with closest thing to tension being that gas coming in. I would have preferred that disabling the gas within the Matrix was the preferred option, but it's actually easier to disable it outside of the Matrix, which kind of makes it feel a bit weak.

Do you mean you feel limited by the character types covered by your team in DF and HK? I'm not sure why, both games have a variety of mates to run with as well as the option to recruit others. Outside of the introduction missions, there should never be a situation where you're forced to run with duplicate character types.

I've played through DMS (4x), DF (4x) and HK (2x) with a wide variety of character types with no problems developing them with the karma available. My unarmed Adept in HK face-rolled the entire game on Hard, including the final boss.