I've been looking to replay the HBS Shadowrun Trilogy. It's been over a decade since release, have any really great campaigns been released for it?I was going to start up something else instead, but one thing the HBS games do right for WRPGs is the structure and pacing, it's very easy to pick up and put down the game. What games could anons suggestion that work similarly to them?
For me, it’s Dragonfall
>>3843985There is really just Antumbra Saga and it's two sequels. And you could check out what's highly rated in Steam Workshop yourself. Note that the SNES remake is total shit much like the overhyped original, oh and the Genesis game is also doghit
>>3843985Consider Mercurial and Stich in Time
>>3844003I never heard of Antumbra Saga, but I see it's related to CalFree in Chains which had a lot of praise. I guess I'll start there.>>3844015I played a little bit of Mercurial, but it was a very long time ago when it was in beta and for the original SRR. I wonder how much it's changed.
>>3843985There's only one Shadowrun video game and it was on Genesis.
I bought Shadowrun Returns way back when it came out and I had little time to know what I was getting into and a desperate urge for good cRPG and I got a measly 6 hour demo and I'm still unwilling to give HareBrained Schemes another cent, even though people say Dragonfall is good
>>3844043They're sometimes available for pretty cheap, but I guess just pirate them then? Personally the only thing they did that annoys me are a lot of their choices with modding that didn't really do a potential mod scene any favors.
>>3843985For mods: Antumbra Saga, Caldecott Caper, Calfree in Chains, Brothers to the End (an obscenely long and great quality prequel to the Genesis game), and The Third Eye are the only complete ones worth playing. Project: Genesis is an in-progress mod but it’s been of good quality so far. I’ve tried all the other recommended mods people say are worth it like Mercurial, Desert Wars, Darkness Falls and have bounced off them all.The closest games to Shadowrun Returns and its spinoffs that fit a pick and play style are the Expeditions series, Wartales, Battle Brothers, Dex, and Wildermyth.
>>3844047Their modding tools being so obtuse and requiring multiple programs killed a lot of interest absolutely, but I think any game based off a TTRPG has a bad foundation for great custom stories and modding projects in general because most who really enjoy the experience and want to spend more time in that world with their own work will get into playing the TTRPG itself. It’s the same reason all other TTRPG games with modding support, even better official support than what HBS did, are desolate in that scene.
>>3844043The worst part of SRR is that it just feels like a proof of concept that the devs hoped the modding scene would carry like NWN.The game has a tutorial that feels like it goes on for several runs with no challenge. There's very few dialog choices at the start, with the police scene investigation being one of the only ones that has any impact (And even not then). Finally by the time you actually get turned loose and can start taking runs and choosing between team members, you do a couple of more runs and then it's time to fight the final boss.DF and HK score points just because they don't have a massive tutorial for new players and get straight to the point. I wish the devs would've gone back and revamped SRR to match the same, cut out the first run with Armitage, the dockside investigation with the native american chick, and the tutorial on decking, replace them with actual runs.
>>3844053TTRPGs require friends, mods don't, which is why NWN still has a ridiculous amount of active mod campaigns and Shadowrun doesn't.
>>3844047It was just too limited, you couldn't even add new music from what I recall.
>>3844114It’s also about the actual availability of the sessions as well. Nobody’s playing Battletech anymore as an actual tabletop session so it has a ton of mods eclipsing Shadowrun’s despite selling less.>>3844016Mercurial was finished but it’s a pretty buggy and limited campaign, I’d compare it in quality to Returns where you get a couple of interesting sections but a lot of stops and starts that kill the momentum.
Holy FUCK I want to replay Hong Kong nowPeople say Dragonfall was great but it was 2epic4me. Should I try it again?
>>3844057>that the devs hoped the modding scene would carry like NWNNot in fucking Unity.
>>3844205I prefer Hong Kong but Dragonfall is definitely worth playing all the way through. The missions are great and I think there’s a lot more reactivity in terms of your character build than the other games, plus if you’re into it Dragonfall has the best mods. The main difference between Dragonfall and Hong Kong (outside of the combat and decking tweaks) and what I suspect made you bounce off it is the narrative focus share between your character + the main plot and the companions + the side plot. Dragonfall with its major focus on companions can kind of feel like an old BioWare-lite game at times for the good and bad that brings: it has your character as close to purely a tool for moving the plot forward minus a couple of roleplaying options you get solely in the beginning two runs and debriefings and while the main story gets very interesting near the end it’s strung together by pretty unrelated runs, but on the other side all the party members (even Blaze who sucks in gameplay) are compelling in one way or another and get interesting arcs. Hong Kong is very much focused on your character and the main story is much more engaging as a result, but the companions outside of Duncan act and are treated like coworkers you get to know just enough to get the job done and their arcs are pretty muted as a result of it.>>3844209NWN’s mod tools have a lot of the same user hostile design as Unity but there weren’t a lot of options except to learn to gitgud at it, so it ended up having staying power.
>>3843985Cirion’s trilogy is the consistently top recommended for a reason. Cirion’s level design is a lot of unfair bullshit though and I ended up enabling console for the last few sections in every one. A lot of posts have already mentioned the rest of the mods worth playing, the few nobody’s mentioned I liked are Good Intentions, Response Time, the shittily named mod Coldplay, and Shadowrun Unlimited if you like the idea of the Genesis game but also thought it sucked to play like >>3844003 mentioned.
>>3844246Characters were nice in Hong Kong though, Love Gobbet, Duncan, Racter and the Samurai. But if you say characters are more developed in Dragonfall, I suppose I'll give it a try.THEN replay Hong Kong. I miss the team.
>>3844256I still enjoyed the characters of HK and would take Duncan and Gobbet any day over 1-2 of the companions in Dragonfall, but I felt a lot of barriers in the writing especially with the events of the epilogue DLC any time I tried to treat and interact with them like the crew in Dragonfall. And I absolutely agree, if I replay any of the Shadowrun games or mods I end up playing HK as well.
>>3844250I really wish he wouldn't insist on retarded minmaxing and ai abusing in the combat sections. It makes the use of violence feel like you are actually in danger but on the other hand the engine and framework just dont offer enough complexity to not make it end as metagaming shitfest where you are essentially forced to abuse the silly balancing of HK and Dragonfall.I tried the third one with a character that wasnt an obscenely cyber optimized 0.1 essence machine pushing combat mechanics to the limit and it was pure cancer.Annoying since the writing of Antumbra is so far above Harebrained Schemes its not even comparable to begin with.
I picked up Antumbra on the thread's recommendations, so far it's pretty good. I'm not playing a minmaxed character though and only have it on hard difficulty, but I can see where >>3844489 is coming from. The boss encounter on the first run I wound up cheesing by using Jazz to get 3 AP and move in and out of line of sight to kill him. I realize you can only do so much with the system and most things boil down to dice rolling until you come out on top, but it felt really cheesy.I'm hoping things will get better since I have a second runner now to add a little more nuance to combat. My PC can only shoot his shotgun and hack things and he's not particularly stellar at either yet.
>>3844057>the devs hoped the modding scene would carry like NWNAnd then they proceeded to release three incompatible versions of the game while also further restricting what you are actually able to mod every time. Baffling decisions all around.
>>3844862I just ran in to that problem installing Antumbra, I kept looking in SRHK for it and finally figured out it was made for Dragonfall.
>>3843985Not at all a RPG but the 2007 Shadowrun FPS is actually pretty fun can't wait till more people feel nostalgic so I can actually find full servers for it.
