Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Review @ HardcoreGamer

Bradley Storm (HardcoreGamer) has reviewed Shadowrun: Hong Kong:

In this day and age of gaming, it’s rare to find a developer that consistently releases not just good titles, but fantastic ones. When Harebrained Schemes first came onto the scene back in 2013, fans weren’t sure what the brand new studio (comprised of industry veterans, mind you) were going to do with the beloved tabletop roleplaying game Shadowrun. After all, the series has had a spotty past in the world of gaming, spawning both great games (like the SNES/Genesis entry) and just mediocre ones (like the multiplayer-centric Shadowrun for Xbox 360 and Windows).

Needless to say, audiences were worried about Shadowrun Returns. Of course, that anxiety disappeared the moment the game released and then became but a fleeting memory when the even more wonderful Dragonfall expansion launched last year. Here we are now in 2015 with Hong Kong, the third Shadowrun in three years. That’s a lot of Shadowrun, right? Seeing as annual franchises often go to the well once too often, Hong Kong — despite Harebrained’s now impressive resume — comes with trepidation of its own: do we really need another Shadowrun game already?

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Closing Comments:

We’ve said it practically with each new Shadowrun Harebrained Schemes puts out, and we’ll say it again for Hong Kong: this is the most definitive, comprehensive and polished version of Shadowrun on the market. It builds on the past games in subtle but smart ways, fixing what was broken, and not touching what wasn’t. As a result, players are left with a magical cRPG that gives them so many options. Whether it’s the dialogue and story, combat, exploration, or the amount of loadout options, this is about as close as folks are going to get to a tabletop experience. The best part is, you don’t have to be a Shadowrun fan to love it. If you are, though, there’s just that much more to get lost in here. This is a game that transcends its name and should be spoken of in the same breath as the genre’s best. In years to come people will be comparing the new cRPGs to Hong Kong, because it’s easily a benchmark for what developers in the RPG arena should be looking at when designing their games.

Score: 4.5/5