Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition

Too much yak-yak. Not enough bang-bang.

Gameplay is the same as Shadowrun: Dragonfall. Same pros and cons.

Close enough to the table-top for me

Even more classic stuffers, just like the first two games. Great music, characters, dialogue, all of it fantastic.

It does justice to the world of Shadowrun. I may like Dragonfall a BIT more as a shadowrun game, but this game is a very close second.

Fun turn-based combat and interactive storytelling. CIrion's mods have excellent additional content

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It's the best of the trilogy.

Buy Hong Kong Extended Edition

So you want to be a shadowrunner, but you played all the Dragonfall content? Look no further.

Buy Hong Kong Extended Edition! Extended Edition includes a campaign following the end of the main Hong Kong story.

Hong Kong is game crack for laptop users because it is a turn-based game which can be played offline with minimal resource usage.

Hong Kong is game crack for tabletop RPG players because they don't have to roll dice or spend hours doing the math; the game does it for you.

Hong Kong is game crack for anyone who loves dystopian futures or urban fantasy, giving the chance to explore Hong Kong in a magical but dystopian future.

Hong Kong is challenging for modders, as it includes ShadowrunEditor.exe in the folder \Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\Common Files\Hong Kong Extended Edition\ and more advanced changes can be made with Unity development tools.
Two laptops ago, when I was trying to create a Fan Mission set in the Phillippines, I used the Editor for HK, and it corrupted my whole project, losing about two months worth of work done in my free time. Make of that what you will. (Yes I'm slow. I was working 60 hour weeks at the time.)


The personnel involved in Hong Kong and Hong Kong Extended Edition include...

- Creative Director Jordan "Zapper" Wiseman, who created the Shadowrun, BattleTech, Renegade Legion, and Earthdawn tabletop RPG universes.
- Many DF developer staff went on to work on the Lamplighters League (2023)


Fan Missions extend replayability of Hong Kong Extended Edition...

Top Notch Fan Missions include:
- Vox Populi - a small team of fans re-made the Dead Man Switch campaign (Shadowrun Returns, set in Seattle) using the HK Editor.

- royalamphibian's "The Enemy of My Enemy" - Solo run (almost) in a locked down office building. Rise to the top or get dead. If you wanted to play Judge Dredd in the film Dredd, this is that sort of fan mission.

- cirion's "The Caldecott Caper" - set in San Francisco Bay area after Antumbra Saga (see Dragonfall Workshop) but before CalFree in Chains. You're a corpsec guard. The company declined your medical claim, so you need to make the cash using what you know about the company and some handy mercenaries...

- cirion's "CalFree in Chains" - Welcome back for one final run in the San Francisco Bay Area Sprawl! This campaign picks up shortly after the end of The Caldecott Caper. Enter, General Saito... aaand, action!

- molefixer's "Coldplay" - You wake in a mostly shut down Ares space station in Earth orbit. Irregular melee character build at start. Not sure it's totally tabletop SR canon, but scarily, it COULD be. The timing and ending of the FM setting is eery.

Shadowrun is the GOAT of Cyberpunk setting.

I reiterate what i wrote for Dragonfall: Awesome Shadowrun RPG.
Great Characters, great Story, great overall writing, if sometimes a little bit to much on the "blabla" site. But that is a nitpick.
And like i said in my Dragonfall Review, i am salty that HB Schemes followed another IP instead of Shadowun.

This is a great game. I used to play Shadowrun, back in the 00s, and I've missed it. This is all the awesome that Shadowrun was, plus all the aweseomness from iso turn based DnD type games. The creativity is brilliant, the balance in the game is brilliant. In short, you need this game.

Shadowrun Return was the best IMO. Every version after that gets progressively worse. Not only does this game include the low hit chance from Dragonfall but is even stingier on the cash and now makes you not able to take hits on easy. Hard pass on this game.

Great turn based strategy RPG. I've played it many times, and nowhere near as many as some of the more hardcore Shadowrun fans. Would love to see more Shadowrun games come out, but for now, the workshop and the originals are still very much keeping this tiny niche franchise alive.

good

Encountered a bug where some NPC dialogue boxes would turn up blank near end game. Also in bad need of Chinese translation. Otherwise great game, 10/10, love the teammates character arc.

9/10 Too much negative qi. - IGN

A fun CRPG, if rough around the edges.

(+) _Gritty_ cyberpunk setting, strong Deus Ex vibes. A definite plus in a sea of "overdone" and neon-saturated cyberpunk games.
(+) Decent story and writing.
(+) Combat is fun. I played as a bog standard street samurai with a rifle. A few times I had flashbacks of X-COM after missing shots right in front of enemies even with a neural-implant aiming system lol

(-) The hacking/decker stuff is atrocious. The matrix world you enter for hacking missions is tedious, and I hated every second of it.
(-) Controls are janky at times. Like not being able to interact with doors and other objects despite clicking on them multiple times.
(-) Companions in RPG games are usually hit or miss, The crew I have in my current run is definitely the latter. Whenever a companion levels up, you select from 1 of 2 upgrades, otherwise the game manages and upgrades their gear automatically. I prefer this system as it cuts down on gear and stat management -- some players might hate it for those same reasons -- but I nevertheless found my team's abilities boring and underwhelming.

I've played better and I've played worse CRPGs. But if you like cyberpunk settings and get this on sale, it's probably worth a playthrough if you like the genre.

Good game.

underrated gem of a game, hope we get more like these in the future

Great substitute for tabletop RPG action, if you can't get around a table with friends.

Harebrained finds near perfection at the end of its rpg trilogy, taking the irresistible Shadowrun setting, doing away with the complicated ttrpg rules, and keeping the best that retro rpgs still have to offer. The story, writing, music, choices, and battles take full advantage of this genre-tango of a world. Really delightful and a solid adventure. Harebrained- if you are still kicking... please, we need more. (I recommend this whole series.)

Arguably the best out of the three Shadowrun games, however let down by a lot of bugs that can be fixed by using the custom campaign feature to download the patched game in there. (It will disable achievements). It's still a fantastic cyberpunk CRPG with a XCOM like system, also comes with a lengthy post game DLC that is free.

The game is also the most old Bioware in it's progression system and companion quests, while Dragonfall had the major elements, HK flesh them out a just enough to flesh out further.

The true shining reason HK is the best is it's custom workshop campaigns. "The Caldecott Caper" and "CalFree in Chains" are two full sized games that use the same old Bioware like structure and are loosely connected with each other, all for no additional cost and are purely fan made.

There is also Vox Populi, a custom campaign that back ported the first Shadowrun returns game in full plus companions and companion quests, again, for free.

This entire trilogy goes on deep sale quite often, it's a no brainer to grab all of them when it happens, but HK is very likely the one you invest the most time in.

Best experience in the Shadowrun series and an exceptionally good crpg. Easy recommendation.

I have played other games in the series like Shadowrun returns and Shadowrun dragonfall, they were OK.
But this game is the worst, The decking is so bad that every time i have to do decking i want to quit the game.
the decking in the mission "the wistleblower" is so horrible , that i decided not to do it and just forced myself through combat.
and the decking in the mission "uninvited guests" made me quit the game and uninstall.

whoever created the decking system for this game should never make games.
there should be a mod that overrides decking

Wonderful game. Interesting story line. Felt very cyber-punkish with a hint of medieval fantasy flair. It is a stand alone game so you do not need to play the previous games by Harebrained. Being the last of the 3 (Returns, Dragonfall, Hong Kong) it is a more polished version. Keep that in mind if you play in reverse.

I'm tired of visual novels pretending to be video games.
I don't want to read your very linear book.

1% gameplay, 99% text reading. 0% choice impact.

Best gameplay in the Shadowrun series reboot (especially playing as a Decker). Dragonfall has the better story but SR:Hong Kong's story is still good overall. The music is great too.

great game

ok about the most polished of all the three shadowrun games, like some one was taking notes the whole time and studied everything and then use it to improve and get us to where shadowrun Hong Kong stands. Everything, from storytelling, character, interface, graphics, you name it. hell where the shadowrun DF last mission left in a rather sour note (for me at least) the beginning alone with HK made me felt interested a curious again about the sixth world, and im digging it, yeah sure there a lot of of cliches ...but they are done right, and I loooove it!!

PS

still for newcomers, I would recommend to play the trilogy in proper order, not only for context, but it offers an interesting perspective how much the game have changed and improved from one tittle to the next.

Very good game great story DLC is good to, characters are very interesting. I would recommend

Recommended

This game a complete hot mess but I still wanna see it through to the end for some reason. Maybe I'm just sadist.

This game is pretty good, but I find the overall plot less compelling than its predecessor. But its companion stories are all better fleshed out, so there's an improvement.

Maybe because I expected more science from this genre, I find a story centering around Chi leaning towards more fantasy department, and that throws me off. But overall, it is still a solid game, with fun combat (except the icebreaking part... I miss the system back in shadowrun 1). I'll give it an 8/10.

There are two types of CRPGs: On rails, and open world. This one is on rails, and that's a good thing.

A CRPG is substitute for a real RPG, which is truly without limits. The open world CRPG makes the false promise of endless adventure, but it's basically just go here, and do that with several options for "here" and several options for "that." Worse yet, it could also just be about grinding for levels or resources.

This game is telling a story filled with interesting characters and settings. It's not complicated. It's not hard. It's just telling a story, and it does that very well. The combat is fairly engaging, but really not very difficult.

The best mechanics in the Shadowrun Trilogy of games. Great characters too. Gunshow will always be my favorite.

Awesome game, Best SR game since SNES

Great game with great atmoshpere. Most of the characters are great, especially Racter, haven't seen such a good writing for a psychopath character in any other games, the writers did their homework and researched for sure. The ending kinda sucked tho to be honest.

Going to punchinate all the baddies but the end boss

In the Linux version, the freaking EXIT button won't work!
How's that for a dirty trick to keep you playing day and night? :)

I really enjoyed Shadowrun and Dragonfall. Honestly, in those games the writing felt a bit "teenage fan-fiction" at times, but it sufficed. Here, it's just bad. It's amateur in every sense, but the worst part is it goes on and on and ON. NPCs have long, pointless backstories and dialog options that I think the writer felt would help flesh out the world more, but it all becomes a blur of mind-numbing tedium. Whoever wrote this has never heard the expression, "Sometimes less is more". This is REALLY BAD in a game that's supposed to be very story-driven but put me into skim reading mode within just a couple hours.

One of my favorite games! Im a huge tabletop convert but gaddamn that system was hard to learn!! Like a university course just to figure out the rules!! So I donated and monitored the Returns kickstarter- it hit the "requisite" concepts- but that game had flaws. Its the only one in the triology I didnt bother finishing. Dragonfall and Hong Kong delivered on the initial promise and Im so grateful I got to immerse myself into the sixth world!! Dragonfall is super good but its late game is sort of wonky in that you go from a quest based system that has multiple victory conditions to a 3 hour grind of pure hellish combat- lol!

Hong Kong was a gift. If youre a CRPG guy- you have to take this one for a spin! Dragonfall gets major points for giving its characters both compelling backstories AND some fairly clever adventure/run tie ins- but Hong Kong tripples down! So much interplay between the RP and the quests/runs/combat- thats really my main issue with these games and SRHK satisfied my stupidly niche itch and then some. It feels wierd to type- but yet again the final part gets ridiculously combat heavy- but tbh I think that plays to this games strengths. You use a few chracacter upgrades and perks to give you bonuses outside of combay- but at the end of the day youre building a min/max cyberpunk fiend whose not here to talk about roleplaying- hes here to street up some samurais...

It has better gameplay than Dragonfall, and I liked the neon Hong Kong world a bit more, but Dragonfall still has a slightly better story, in my opinion.

Great isometric RPG. Just as good as the other two games. Sad to see this IP ended, but modding has kept the replayability high with new campaigns.

Very good isometric RPG, with memorable characters. A little wordy at times. Dragonfall was easily the best of the three, but there's a lot of good play here. Like others, I did not like their changes to matrix gameplay.

I played this game while working a customer service position and my playtime does not reflect my actual time played.

I really enjoyed all 3 games from Shadowrun trilogy. Hong-Kong is the best in terms of UI\UX but I felt more attached to the first two in terms of story\world. Anyway, Hong Kong story is also great and I certainly urge you to play it and the previous two games two. It's quite old, but playing in 2024 I still had a great time and really enjoyed it!

This and Dragonfall punch far above their weight. They don't have Larian money but it doesn't matter. The characters are sharp, the scenarios interesting, and the combat fun and varied. I don't recommend the Dead Man's Switch campaign, but this one rocks.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong is the last of the Harebrained Schemes Shadowrun trilogy and the best one of them.

The game is still based on the tabletop RPG, which has solid mechanics that translate well into a cRPG. However, this time around it feels like there are more roleplay options and little flourishes tied to your stats and skills.

The big innovation is having Matrix combat be partly real time - when there are no (active) enemies on the screen you avoid detection by timing your movement and skirting sightlines. It's a bit jarring at first, but by the end of the game it feels natural. A hacking minigame has also been added this time around, which makes the Matrix part of the game feel more distinct.

The story for this one is good, significantly longer than both Shadowrun Returns and SR: Dragonfall, but it never feels like it drags. This time around your decisions during the game seem to carry more weight at the end as well, which is nice.

All in all, it's an amazing game and I highly recommend it!

Still very fun but I preferred the other 2 entries

didnt like it