
I'm getting a lot of use from Summons, Barriers, and Shadow, on my most recent mission especially. These abilities are really swaying the momentum back in our favour when hostile numbers become overwhelming.
I never used Barriers at all in Dragonfall. Neither Shadow, I don't think. And only the odd Summon. It's really changed things up.
I'm feeling the pinch with skimping by on a Body score of 3 which shall need remedied. I also only have 1 Dodge to further compound matters. Well, I wanted to test the limits. A little bump wont go amiss now that the results are in. Sarsa is being targeted far too often and getting hit a lot, even when further back.
Having run out of interesting people to kill in Berlin, my rigger has taken her murderous talents to Hong Kong
Cool! I was wavering between Shaman and Mage for Hong Kong, but went with mage because it was the least known to me from Dragonfall. I really enjoyed Dietrich's Shaman skil set in Dragonfall though. If I play Returns, I'd either go with a shaman or a hand-to-hand fighter.
A magic based character is, thematically, a good choice for Hong Kong I think, personally.
A magic based character is, thematically, a good choice for Hong Kong I think, personally.
Interesting. Good to know.
The Mage class is still relatively untapped for me. That may be my next port of call unless I bleed into those areas with my current Shaman.
Still tempted to roll another Physical Adept, though.
I don't know when I'll ever get around to any cyberwear. Going the magic route has saw me skip right over it, twice now, and perhaps a forthcoming third.
Godzilla Blitz wrote:Cool! I was wavering between Shaman and Mage for Hong Kong, but went with mage because it was the least known to me from Dragonfall. I really enjoyed Dietrich's Shaman skil set in Dragonfall though. If I play Returns, I'd either go with a shaman or a hand-to-hand fighter.
A magic based character is, thematically, a good choice for Hong Kong I think, personally.
. To be the counter point. Technology is also thematically relevant due to the story harps on the balance of things and there are certain characters that also fetishized the circuit board lifestyle.
There's still hope! Life still getting in the way, and when I got a chance to play I lost a lot of motivation after taking my Decker into his second Decky thing and getting absolutely destroyed by a couple of glowing boxes.
Re: Final combat (I hope):
I F*kcing hate countdown timers.
I kind of felt bad, but Dragonfall was one of the first RPGs where I found myself scanning a lot of the text rather than paying attention to 100% of it. The art style and camera made it so I felt sort of disconnected from what was going on a lot of the time. I think the text made a good effort to make up for that, and in and of itself it was usually well done. But it frequently didn't really matter what was actually said.
I read every word intently in Dragonfall. I am guilty of skimming somewhat in Returns.
Finished! Took 3 tries to beat the last mission,
and I finally had success when I stopped trying to delay the countdown timer and just tried to kill the enemies as fast as possible. The action economy of that fight was way overbalanced, I think.
Regardless, I chose in the end not to free the Dragon, but then accepted the job with Lofwyr. I like the thought of a direct sequel following that plotline, though I'm not optimistic we'll get one. I would like to revisit Shadowrun's Germany.
I'm not sure if I shared my choices.
Dragonfall Ending:
I chose to destroy APEX. Too dangerous. Too much power. Too much disregard for human life.
I talked Vauclair around. He decided to bring an end to the madness. Leaning on memories of his brother, of the mistakes, of what would be genocide, and of what may fill the void, the imbalance, left from removing dragons from existence.
I freed Firewing. We had good conversations before I enabled her astral form to become one with her physical existence once more. She is powerful, like APEX, but understands the value of life alongside her duty to protect mother nature. She brings fury only when mother nature is endangered.
I turned down the offer from Lofwyr. Don't make a deal with a dragon. Nope.
At least for this protagonist's play through, these were the choices. Next one, who knows.
I'm struggling a bit with a mage in Hong Kong.
I made it through another mission today, but once again I took a pretty good beating. I needed to burn through a half dozen medikits, and the mission rewards seem quite a bit less than in Dragonfall. That doesn't leave a lot of room for upgrading armor, spells, and weapons, which makes the next mission tougher as well.
Right now I've been trying to upgrade spells and whatnot, but the offensive power of spells doesn't seem to be all that great compared to just shooting something with a rifle.
I'm hoping I can turn a corner on things soon. Everything is still fun, so no complaints, but I wasn't expecting it to be as challenging to manage combat as it has been.
I'm in the same boat with my shaman. I'm coasting along until I run into a bunch of elementals. They kicked my butt. I think the number of combatants have been more than in dragonfall and the friends I bring along have been less powerful.
Stayed up far too late last night only to run into that (apparently infamous) APEX mission glitch and have my progress for that hour+ of lost sleep wiped out.
Ah well, hopefully I'll be much more efficient next time, assuming I don't find myself unable to take actions again.
Bummer, I ran into a different glitch during the Blitz mission that lost me a bunch of time.
While I appreciate the devs looking at Decking in Shadowrun Returns and Dragonfall and realizing it wasn't very interesting and trying something new with Hong Kong, I can't help feeling like the extra complexity, while interesting the very first time you do it, somehow made Decking even less fun than it was in the previous games.
Contemplating just ignoring it altogether, though there's still that part of me which feels like I might miss something if I don't do it.
I think I tend to agree with you Godzilla Blitz. I thought Rigging was overpowered in Dragonfall, but darn did it ever get cranked up to 11 in Hong Kong. In Dragonfall, each class of drones had 2 types, an attack and a support. Support didn't do a ton of damage, but could flashbang, a couple times, heal, and do other useful things. So far in Hong Kong, not only is there the support drone, but there are 3 different types of attack drones. Assault with an SMG, Sniper, and standard. So I'm running double attack drones, with the assault and standard. Additionally my drone combat is already high enough that my drones already have 3 AP, and I'm less than 1/4 through the game. Throw in Racter who brings his own drone, but, perhaps more importantly, can overclock my drones giving them more AP, and playing on hard difficulty it is rare that I have an encounter that lasts more than 2 rounds.
So I get done reading the wall of words, finally make it to encounter, rub my hands together in anticipation of an awesome battle, and within a minute, all the enemies are dead and I'm back to reading more text.
The writing is good, I just wish there was more to break it up...
Into The Breach has eaten into my Returns journey. I'm not complaining. ITB is a great game. Still, I can't help but feel less interested by Returns. It's good. Just not as good as Dragonfall. I'm glad I played the latter first though, as Returns may have stopped my progressing to Dragonfall. Where as Dragonfall created momentum that took me to Returns.
I'm mostly interested by seeing what I can do with the Shaman class as I progress. The story, not so much.
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