OK, I got a worse ending with sacrificing Raymond and saving people in slums. Having CH12 (all etiquette) and IN7 not seeing this option at all. Battled Yama King 3 times, the last one was a joke.

There are no stat checks here. There is a list of story-related requirements. To obtain the best ending, you must have talked to Duncan enough, chosen the option to break up the fight between him and Raymond, rested five times (to have the nightmares), and had Crafty Xu send you her mother's notes. Plus maybe some other dialogues that occur inbetween runs.

Oh I see, I haven't interrupt them arguing properly. Had all the nightmares and 2 emails from crafty. Thank you, perhaps I'll revisit this game in a year when all patches and DLC come around. Cheers ;)

You need to read the emails, not just receive them!

It may also be necessary to get Is0bel to tell you the stories she knows about the Walled City.

The option should show up after the 2nd fight. She basically wants a deal, and you basically say my counter offer is you leave. I think all you need is Crafty's convos to know the Yama Kings are bound. I may or may not have slept and I'm pretty sure I didn't get Is0bel's story about the little kid making the deal, but I may have.

If you fight 3 times I think Raymond has to sacrifice himself.

You can get the "bad" ending after only the first fight.

The bad ending is when you take the first deal, 14 years of luck.

Raymond and the team doesn't like that and you have to kill them. Only Gaichu and Raector don't turn on you.

I have to say I think that one of the reasons everyone hates the matrix now is because Is0bel is such an atrocious decker. Her deck is just garbage, and her HP total is very low. With the Black ICs doing host damage, and her just eating it all, she gets killed pretty easily.

I finally got around to making my own decker and the Prosperity Tower run was very smooth. Even when he did take damage it was something like 16 total on one shot, and with a pool of 70+ HP that isn't a big deal. For some reason sometimes you can heal them outside and sometimes you can't, I think you can heal them the turn after sometimes but not always. Is0bel I've never been able to heal like that, but I have when I decked it myself. Actually, I didn't even have a true decker, it was mostly a Cyberware microfilament whip run, but I put in 5 on decking, 5 INT and I think 4 on ESPs (had one ESP only even) with the translim deck or whatever it was called, and it was already so much better than Is0bel with her on level 6. After prosperity tower I then sold everything and just added on some more cyberware.

Still, I think you're better off just not decking most of the time. You'll miss the paydata, which can kind of suck, but it just depends on just how much you dislike it.

I've read people hate Gaichu and Duncan, but I've found them to be pretty strong. Gaichu really comes on towards the end, Duncan is pretty weak towards the end though. Gaichu's ghoul cloud thing is pretty strong, and when he can bite and regen he's pretty durable too. He does eat bit crits more than you'd want and has trouble hitting, especially with his sword, but there are just enemies that are hard to hit sometimes.

I think my favorite team, especially for combat, is Gaichu, Duncan, Gobbet. But all the characters are solid enough. The game is pretty easy after all. I know they're adding more difficulty levels, I guess that's when we can find out what is actually viable or not at higher levels.

No I think most people hate the new matrix because it has crappy real-time "stealth" bits, crappy simple simon bits, and crappy memory games.

As you found out yourself, you were able to easily kick ass in the matrix with only a 5 decking - which would have been much harder in Dragonfall. This is another reason (related to all the above) why the new matrix is crap - decking skills hardly matter now. Those crappy Simon/memory games aren't even affected by decking stats!

While I dislike the new Matrix, it's easy enough to do, so I just power through it.

My favourites vary depending on the specialties of my main character. Gaichu for close combat, Duncan for ranged, Gobbet for support, Is0bel for decking and/or explosions.

Gaichu kicks ass, but he's best when someone like Gobbet is along so she can buff his accuracy and AP. For added fun, give him some Tokko so he gets more accurate/powerful every time he gets hit!

Duncan is to ranged combat what Gaichu is to close combat - so I tend to bring at least one of them along, sometimes both.

Is0bel might not have great accuracy, but her grenade launcher is still pretty cool. On the first play through I was a decker and still brought her along once or twice just for the launcher.

I also like Racter since many missions benefit from a drone. That and Koshei is pretty cool later on and/or when buffed with Racter's controller. It's a shame Racter himself isn't a great shot, but you can't have everything.

I always used both Gaichu and Duncan in combat-heavy runs. He is my best rifleman, and then I took that bionic arm skill that enables him to throw back grenades at enemies, which made him even better. There's a simple strategy involved: pair Duncan with another character behind cover to bait enemies into throwing grenades, then watch as Duncan lobs them back every time. Free grenades, without the AP cost!

Oh eventually I couldn't stand doing either the stealth or simple simon junk. I'd just rush to the end, and if my alert was low enough I'd kill the enemies and just force through the doors. If it was high enough to call in the Black ICs, then I'd just kill the Black ICs and then break down the doors. I can't tolerate sneaking and that other nonsense.

If I get spotted I just run to the end. If you go through a door the spot actually drops. If you can't get through a door I find some cover, call up my ESPs and buff them up, and then wait. After you kill the Black ICs the regular enemies are gone, only the doors remain.

Yeah I definitely just ran to the end if I got spotted, unless there was something I needed to crack in the room I was in. In that case I would often attack the blocker IC so I wouldn't have to do the Simon thing later.

On the one hand, it feels kind of cheap that it's mostly easier to just kill everything rather than be stealthy, but on the other hand I'm glad it's like that because otherwise the stealth crap would have driven me nuts.

I would have preferred that instead of "watcher IC" patrolling along like they do, they stand guard and check your "id" or something. Then you have the option of attempting to spoof them (which would cause an alert and teleport in lots of IC on failure, with failure dependent on your decking/deck stats), or just attack them outright.

The stealth doesn't even make sense in the matrix - why wouldn't the designers of the node simply just build it so that everyone is spotted and scanned as soon as they enter? Doesn't make any sense.

What's really annoying is there is no real advantage to a higher decking skill on those doors or anything. Plus the enemies just all pop up at once on you if you walk into a room or whatever. If you position yourself behind cover and wait then you actually get to attack them, but if you don't keep AP in store they all get an attack which can be rough (or if you try running through a door).

Decking skill should have reduced cost on Forcing a door, and also reduced the number of enemies. There is a password feature I've seen in Prosperity tower, but I've never used it. I've had the codes too, but who is going to type all of that in. Most of the time you don't even get codes though.

Is0bel is really bad though because her deck is bad. It's easier to be a decker yourself and power through easier. But Is0bel can do it too, just it's even more tedious with her because she has less AP to work with, less evasion, etc.

Nowadays I just make combat runs and don't bother hacking if I can help it, outside of Prosperity Tower where you're forced to do it. Decking requires way too many points in it, for too little real return on it. Actually even with Charisma most of the time you still have to fight too, so it's also not that useful either. Basically for HK you're pretty much just always going to be fighting so might as well just get to it.

The best build I've found is a Shotgun build, with the Enfield and the cyber that auto-reloads. Then you just haste, pop a jazz if you really want, and you can kill most enemies pretty cleanly, especially since most of the maps are tiny in this game. Enfield also comes a little earlier (the 18 damage gun that has a burst fire feature).

Yes one thing that they DID adjust better (IMO) is that weapons tend to have slightly lower requirements than the ridiculously high stat requirements in Dragonfall.

I found that you can avoid a lot of combat in this game though. Sure most maps there's at least one combat, but generally that's near the end of a level (not including the final level which is basically combat all the way through).

Hacking is still good for the paydata - which you kind of need since the mission payouts are so low. Not that those piddly payments will make a huge difference, but I like to get everything possible.

One other thing that bugged me about hacking is that they went to a lame stealth setup, and yet there are STILL some matrix nodes where you get attacked immediately! What the hell is the good of that!? Doesn't make much sense either - why would they have watchers when you're just getting attacked anyway?

The thing is, fixing the matrix shouldn't require massive amounts of effort - they can just have the blocker IC pop up a standard dialog, and allow attempting to bypass or force using skills that way. That way there's no crappy Simon game AND they can take advantage of skills. I'm pretty sure they can use random variables in conversations too - if so that would be an easy fix.

I'm hoping that when the higher difficulty arrives it will bring with it a revamp of all the encounters on all difficulties. They really do seem like first pass/placeholder encounters. I just restarted another play through of Dragonfall and the difference is quite stark.

Nearly every mission in Dragonfall drives home the notion that combat should be a last resort. Quite often when you face a serious fight, they offer up a Drone Control and/or decking option that can really sway things in your favour. Shadowrun Hong Kong seems quite forgiving of ,if not outright encouraging you to storm the place, guns blazing.

The matrix revamp sounded great paper but this new one is just as tedious and uninteresting. I was quite disappointed that everywhere you jack in looks the same and plays the same. The 'skin' changes for a single mission but even there, enemies aren't unique. You still never meet anyone at all in the Matrix... its just corridors and the same old ice.

Not to sound totally down on the game. I just got the impression it needed a bit longer in the oven.

Yeah I seem to recall in DF you usually didn't want to just run in guns blazing. That metahuman mission was especially one where if you just decided to fight you'd have a really rough one on your hands, it is better to just pick enemies.

There's a similar mission in HK, but actually it's not that difficult to just take both groups out together and it's the final part of the run so it matters even less. Plus even trying to hack or set up a trap in advance does nothing either.

I still like HK, but I think they are going to need a Director's Cut type edition that adds some more things in. Although maybe this was intentional.

DF didn't seem like "runs" so much as "missions." DMS was also more "runs" and HK is also more of these quick hit "runs." DF seemed like a greater struggle with more on the line than just being a corporate tool, which is really what runners are. DMS and HK both drive home the idea that you are in fact powerless and inconsequential in the world. Whereas DF you are dealing with a major player, partly because he already did the hard work by making a killer AI and taming a corporate dragon on his own. Vakluur is quit the dominant personality and generational genius if you think about it, as he was portrayed to be. He fought a dragon and won, and then also changed the path of the entire world on his own...perhaps not for the best result.

As Kindly tells you at the end of HK, what you've done doesn't really matter and it will all be forgotten in a couple of weeks anyway. The Yama Kings, as much as they are built up, are not actually on the level of a dragon.