Cyberpunk 2077

[sihnfahl]

Just got around to doing the sinnerman questline for the first time and man is it heavy and intense. Had to actually walk away from the game for a while just to process it.

Spoiler

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So, did you assist with the crucifixion or not?

Also, in terms of messed up, have you done 'The Hunt'?

[Corvus]

Spoiler

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So, did you assist with the crucifixion or not?

Also, in terms of messed up, have you done 'The Hunt'?

Yes to the first, no to the second.

[BRC]

I've encountered way more than that. The only problem is that with bog-standard Quickhack tree, every robot is a one-shot with Short Circuit, even on Very Hard.

Cold blood is very useful. Course, at this point, I'm using a tech rifle that's headcritting for at least 80k damage...

Robots are still very rare considering there's at least 5 skill trees that seem to specifically deal with fighting them.


Mind you, it's true that I have yet to find a drone that doesn't get one-shot with short circuit (Well, there is one, the big stomper patrolling the Araska warehoues, but you can't get into a standup fight there and survive anyway). But the Engineering talent that lets me get extra resources from killing them has been useful.

[sihnfahl]

Yes to the first, no to the second.

When that one comes up, I would suggest having a bucket nearby if you have a sensitive stomach.

It's Beyond Messed Up.

Robots are still very rare considering there's at least 5 skill trees that seem to specifically deal with fighting them.

Yeah, it's just one of those point sinks, it seems. And some cyberware and perks are cross purposes. Like having an immunity to poison cuts you off from using the cyberware that heals you when you're poisoned.

[Chen]

Yeah, it's just one of those point sinks, it seems. And some cyberware and perks are cross purposes. Like having an immunity to poison cuts you off from using the cyberware that heals you when you're poisoned.

The cyberware like that usually requires different stats as the pre-reqs. The immune to burning one takes Body but the one that increases your damage instead when burning takes Cool, for example.

[druid91]

Switching from a Netrunner build to an Annihilation/Cold Blood Solo build is kind of interesting.

Things that I remember being a pain in the rear are now cakewalks. On the other hand, I'm nowhere near as stealthy because I can't just... switch people off. Also LMG's eat ammo at a rapid pace.

[Corvus]

The LMG is really underpowered. Not to mention there is only one version of it, no smart or tech versions and no iconic.

[druid91]

The LMG is really underpowered. Not to mention there is only one version of it, no smart or tech versions and no iconic.

True, which is why I've begun pack-ratting HMGs into my cars trunk. On the start of any mission where I think it might be handy, I unload an HMG.

[Yora]

"I have become a biotic god!"

Now at level 40, with legendary Short Circuit (3431/sec damage), I can walk up to the average group of goons in Santo Domingo and make them fall unconscious just by looking at them. (On Hard difficulty.)

And I am still skill level 2 in Athletics.

[Calemyr]

"I have become a biotic god!"

Now at level 40, with legendary Short Circuit (3431/sec damage), I can walk up to the average group of goons in Santo Domingo and make them fall unconscious just by looking at them. (On Hard difficulty.)

And I am still skill level 2 in Athletics.

Athletics is infamously messed up. It doesn't increment easily, even if you run the entire game. There is a very easy (albeit a trifle tricky) exploit max that out quickly. Who knows when they'll get to crushing exploits, though.

Spoiler: Athletics Exploit

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The shorthand is to use the Berserker OS cyberware.

It doesn't need to be a high grade Berserker, the green you can get from the Arroyo Westbrook ripper doc will do the trick. You do need 6 Body, however, as a minimum, and there are no Act I ripper docs that sell a Berserker, or crimes that offer one as loot.

The basic concept here is simple, but the timing can be tricky. It may take a few tries. Here's the trick:
1) Go somewhere you can swing a weapon without getting in trouble (not essential, but it helps).
2) Activate Berserk mode.
3) Swing a melee weapon/fists. Heavy attacks work easiest, but flurries can do the job as well.
4) While mid-swing, go into the menu (Inventory/Map/Character/etc menu).
5) Stay in the menu for a while. A couple minutes should do the trick if your Body is lower, maybe ten to fifteen if you've got 20.
6) Done.

Again, it doesn't always work, so it will probably take a couple tries to get it right. You can check your progress by checking your Athletics score in the character menu. The number doesn't update while you're on the screen, but shift to, say, Street Brawler and then back, the number should update. Not all of the skill bonuses apply until you leave the menu, however.

As far as I can tell, the logic seems to be that the Berserk doesn't reduce Stamina usage to 0, but instead ups stamina regen the point you don't see it drop when you swing. That way you still gain XP while swinging and sprinting in Berserk mode.. That regen bonus, however, isn't coded to halt during the pause menu like everything else so, if you have a sliver of stamina to gain, it will just keep trying to fill it. Since you get Athletics XP as your stamina recovers, and it's recovering very fast because of Berserk, but can't fill up because stamina doesn't actually refill while in the menu, you rack up Athletics skill comically fast.

Who knows how long this one will last, of course. Doubt it'll survive patch 1.2. Everybody knows gaming companies make a priority of squashing the fun bugs first.

The second, more legitimate way of training it a trifle faster than normal is to take a melee weapon into an elevator and just swing until you're exhausted, rest up to full stamina, and start swinging again. It's still dirt slow, but snail speed is still better than glacial speed.

[sihnfahl]

Athletics is infamously messed up. It doesn't increment easily, even if you run the entire game. There is a very easy (albeit a trifle tricky) exploit max that out quickly. Who knows when they'll get to crushing exploits, though.

In my game run, Quickhacking and Crafting have been the fastest to level - mostly because those are so easy to use.

Stealth is also stupidly easy to level - it's pretty quick if you dump bodies post-combat. Just find a group in an area with a lot of dumpsters, lay into them, then dump the bodies. Easy.

Problem is the weapon skills, which only increase if you kill enemies. I keep running out of enemies. Heck, I even picked fights with the border guards - once i learned you couldn't pass a certain point at the border stations (instakill from an invisible wall), they just turned into pinatas with a tech sniper. Easily a few hundred thousand damage headshots now.

[Chen]

In my game run, Quickhacking and Crafting have been the fastest to level - mostly because those are so easy to use.

Stealth is also stupidly easy to level - it's pretty quick if you dump bodies post-combat. Just find a group in an area with a lot of dumpsters, lay into them, then dump the bodies. Easy.

Problem is the weapon skills, which only increase if you kill enemies. I keep running out of enemies. Heck, I even picked fights with the border guards - once i learned you couldn't pass a certain point at the border stations (instakill from an invisible wall), they just turned into pinatas with a tech sniper. Easily a few hundred thousand damage headshots now.

Once you get legendary short circuit and a high crit rate almost all your “kills” will actually be non-lethal since it’s the quick hack that lands the killing blow. Still levels weapon skill though and you can then shoot the people again on the ground to actually kill them which levels the skill again (and cold blood).

[sihnfahl]

Once you get legendary short circuit and a high crit rate almost all your “kills” will actually be non-lethal since it’s the quick hack that lands the killing blow. Still levels weapon skill though and you can then shoot the people again on the ground to actually kill them which levels the skill again (and cold blood).

Yep. That and high crit contagion. Most enemies drop in a single cycle. I also have the skills and cyber so it spreads to more targets, lasts longer. Fire and forget.

Still slow, though, since, like I said, I'm running out of enemies. And I should stop using skippy - I put him on pacifist mode, and, well, his bullets can't seem to handle barricades so well.

[Yora]

I think I've now seen some 90% of the game, got to level 49, have one stat at 20 and a couple of skills at 15. I think all that's left is City Center, wrapping up Kerry and Panam, and then doing the main story end game.

I'm not a game developer, and I'm not even well read about what's publicly available through industry journalism. But I know the game was in development for ages, and the release was obviously rushed, given how buggy the release version was and how much better it was already just one week later.

This game feels very much like the developers put themselves much more on their plate than they could handle and still had very little to show for after years of work. It feels like a game where someone at the top finally put a stop to it and said "this can't go on forever, we have to release something. Wrap up what you have as well as you can and get it out the door in three months, because we really have to start making some money on this."

Now the main story of the game is great. The side stories with Judy, Panam, River, Kerry, and Rogue are great.
The police missions are all the same. Not just hyperbolicallly. They are all 4 to 6 gang members stand around a box/corpse, and you have to take them all out and take a shard with a tiny conversation log from the box/corpse.
The gigs are a bit better, but in the end, they are also all the same. 8 to 12 gang members stand around in a house. Somewhere is a box with a shard you have to take or a computer you have to plug in (which are both the same "go to a block in the environment and press *use*"). There are maybe a dozen exceptions, in which you have to kill the gang boss instead. They generally take a bit longer than the police missions and all of them have a specific fully voiced phone call at the start. But that's it.

If you play the entire game completely, gigs and police missions are probably 80 to 90% of the entire game. And it feels really obvious that they were all hastily slapped together at the very end of development because the game still had barely any content.

The city looks great, but is horribly underused. For the amount of content in the game, the world could have been a third or a quarter the size and it would actually have been better for it because you'd get a chance to get familiar with places and main roads. There are many market places and even a park in the game which you all visit exactly once. There are no hubs in the game. Maybe the Afterlife, but that's really just where you get to talk with Rogue three or four times and two times with Nix. I feel quite certain the level designer build the city first and had it more or less finalized many years ago. The assumption was that it would be filled with content later. But it never was.
There are items in the game that give you more breathing time under water. I was under water exactly twice in the whole game to recover a stolen item that the thieves threw in the river. Which took about 10 seconds each. Clearly they had plans to make diving an important game mechanic, but nothing ever came from it.

Another clear sign that something went very wrong is with the Database entries for NPCs. Those are clearly from a much earlier version of the game that was very different from the final product. Some relatively relevant characters don't appear at all. While some NPCs that do have an entry with a full image appear for all of 30 seconds to never be mentioned again.

I feel that this game did not need 6 more month to be amazing. I think they actually had no idea where to go with the concept. The decision to finally end it and release what they had at that point was the right one. The story parts of the game are great. Those are the parts that the developers had a lot of experience with from the Witcher game. But if there was any clear concept about an engaging game about the mercenary life, it isn't apparent in the final product. If they had made it a 30 hour game in a much smaller world, without all the gigs and police missions, I think they absolutely could have made a game that would have been great at what it was. But everything else that Cyberpunk 2077 is is really pretty meh.

I actually really want to see another game to follow up on this one. One that begins development with a fresh start, with a solid plan, that builds on all the lessons that have been learned from the mistakes with this one. There is some gold under all of this. Quite a lot actually. But there's just so much filler that doesn't really serve any purpose.

[sihnfahl]

The city looks great, but is horribly underused. For the amount of content in the game, the world could have been a third or a quarter the size and it would actually have been better for it because you'd get a chance to get familiar with places and main roads.

Oh, there was probably a LOT of cut content (like all the storefronts and vendors who don't sell you anything). Then again, there's almost no variety to the vendors as is. Especially the netrunner shops. Always the same amount of crafting mats (which you should be swimming in anyway if you're into hacking) and the same green quickhacks that you can make once you start down the road of quickhack crafting.

Now, as for a lot of that empty space ... mm, I'm going to have to hold on that one. All that unused space is also available space for the eventual DLC - just change locked doors to interactable doors, plot out the insides, add the quest stuff. Add gates to fencing, and entire blocks open up, rather than be completely surrounded by impassable walls, even if you have a charged jump.

They just ran with the easiest quests to script, aside from the occasional pathing issue, or the trigger that fails to. Probably more, but scripting issues could have slowed those down.

[BRC]

I think I've now seen some 90% of the game, got to level 49, have one stat at 20 and a couple of skills at 15. I think all that's left is City Center, wrapping up Kerry and Panam, and then doing the main story end game.

I'm not a game developer, and I'm not even well read about what's publicly available through industry journalism. But I know the game was in development for ages, and the release was obviously rushed, given how buggy the release version was and how much better it was already just one week later.

This game feels very much like the developers put themselves much more on their plate than they could handle and still had very little to show for after years of work. It feels like a game where someone at the top finally put a stop to it and said "this can't go on forever, we have to release something. Wrap up what you have as well as you can and get it out the door in three months, because we really have to start making some money on this."

Now the main story of the game is great. The side stories with Judy, Panam, River, Kerry, and Rogue are great.
The police missions are all the same. Not just hyperbolicallly. They are all 4 to 6 gang members stand around a box/corpse, and you have to take them all out and take a shard with a tiny conversation log from the box/corpse.
The gigs are a bit better, but in the end, they are also all the same. 8 to 12 gang members stand around in a house. Somewhere is a box with a shard you have to take or a computer you have to plug in (which are both the same "go to a block in the environment and press *use*"). There are maybe a dozen exceptions, in which you have to kill the gang boss instead. They generally take a bit longer than the police missions and all of them have a specific fully voiced phone call at the start. But that's it.

If you play the entire game completely, gigs and police missions are probably 80 to 90% of the entire game. And it feels really obvious that they were all hastily slapped together at the very end of development because the game still had barely any content.

The city looks great, but is horribly underused. For the amount of content in the game, the world could have been a third or a quarter the size and it would actually have been better for it because you'd get a chance to get familiar with places and main roads. There are many market places and even a park in the game which you all visit exactly once. There are no hubs in the game. Maybe the Afterlife, but that's really just where you get to talk with Rogue three or four times and two times with Nix. I feel quite certain the level designer build the city first and had it more or less finalized many years ago. The assumption was that it would be filled with content later. But it never was.
There are items in the game that give you more breathing time under water. I was under water exactly twice in the whole game to recover a stolen item that the thieves threw in the river. Which took about 10 seconds each. Clearly they had plans to make diving an important game mechanic, but nothing ever came from it.

Another clear sign that something went very wrong is with the Database entries for NPCs. Those are clearly from a much earlier version of the game that was very different from the final product. Some relatively relevant characters don't appear at all. While some NPCs that do have an entry with a full image appear for all of 30 seconds to never be mentioned again.

I feel that this game did not need 6 more month to be amazing. I think they actually had no idea where to go with the concept. The decision to finally end it and release what they had at that point was the right one. The story parts of the game are great. Those are the parts that the developers had a lot of experience with from the Witcher game. But if there was any clear concept about an engaging game about the mercenary life, it isn't apparent in the final product. If they had made it a 30 hour game in a much smaller world, without all the gigs and police missions, I think they absolutely could have made a game that would have been great at what it was. But everything else that Cyberpunk 2077 is is really pretty meh.

I actually really want to see another game to follow up on this one. One that begins development with a fresh start, with a solid plan, that builds on all the lessons that have been learned from the mistakes with this one. There is some gold under all of this. Quite a lot actually. But there's just so much filler that doesn't really serve any purpose.

This is about where I am (level 35 or so?) haven't even looked at Database Entries, but there is a definite sign of there being too many ideas put into the game that were then cut, but left in.


I don't mind the Police Missions, they're Samey yeah, but ignorable, and the base gameplay is fun enough that I enjoy tackling them as a way to try out a new weapon.

Like, maybe I'm just jaded, but it feels like a pretty standard open-world ARPG to me. A big map full of tokens forms the basic Gameplay Loop, there are some side-missions and main story that are cooler. There are a ton of unfinished or unrealized mechanics going on, but the core "Go out do a mission" gameplay loop is one I find pretty solid. From a high-concept, it feels like they were going for Cyberpunk Skyrim, and it feels like they succeeded on that front. The Gigs and NCPD missions are just this game's equivalent of walking down the road and getting attacked by bandits or mudcrabs. Yeah, the game could probably do without them, and they're there to pad out playtime, but that's part of this style of game, and at least here they've made them all completely ignorable unless you hate icons on your screen.


I'm pretty sure that they designed the item/skill system independent of the rest of the game however. Items that allow you to breath underwater more are basically useless, same with all the stuff that helps you against Drones. There are separate skill trees for blades and bludgeoning weapons, when the two are, for the most part, basically just reskins of each other (It's trivial to pop in a nonlethal eye mod if you want to go nonlethal). Maybe there was originally intended to be a bigger spread of mission types, with more of a focus on breaking into Megacorp complexes (Where fighting Drones and such would make a lot of sense), but Megacorp buildings require more work both from a writing and design perspective, so almost all the Megacorp missions got taken out and replaced with fighting Gangs, because you can just stick a bunch of gangers in any abandoned building or parking lot and make a mission out of it. I think there is like, one random mission in the badlands that has you up against Militech, and they have a few drones? Otherwise, it seems to be all Gangers. You only ever seem to fight Arasaka in the main storyline.

I wouldn't have minded a bit more diversity of enemy types between the gangs. Maybe I haven't been playing around with elemental damage enough, but they seem to all be pretty generic "Dudes with guns" plus some Cybered-up shotgunners who can zip around, and maybe a few melee fighters?

Edit: Speaking of cut content. I feel like since I left Watson, I haven't fought any enemy netrunners. It seems like they just dropped that whole mechanic. I don't mind since it wasn't particularly well-implemented IMO, but still.


One thing I do appreciate is them not including a "Speech" skill, instead your various other skills work to unlock speech options depending on context (Although I feel like my Tech skill shows up way more often than any of the others). It always feels obligatory to put points into "Speech" because it's just a big "Did you put enough points into this to get the Good Thing" button that feels bad everytime you see the dialogue option but can't click it.

[Yora]

I don't mind the Police Missions, they're Samey yeah, but ignorable

That's true, but not a defense. I was considering that point myself. But when the game becomes better by ignoring specific parts of the content, then that content should not be in the game in the first place. Instead of upgrading the overall game experience, their inclusion is a downgrade.

I have to backpaddle a bit on the gigs all being the same, though. Only 90% of them are all the same. (But for the police stuff, it's 100% the same.)
There's the Peralez quests, the Flaming Crotch Man, the Korean guy who needs to be extracted from a cheap motel, the fridge in Kabuki, and the Lizzy Whizzy quest for example. (Though the last one feels really unfinished.) There are a couple of gigs that are different and have some dialog. And I liked them. If they were all like these, the mercenary life would have been a great idea.

From a high-concept, it feels like they were going for Cyberpunk Skyrim, and it feels like they succeeded on that front.

Oh dear, you're right. It is a lot like Skyrim with Quickhacks. Though I have a lot of problem with the Bethesda formula personally. I don't think they ever made a single good game. (Morrowind has an amazing setting, complete wasted on a poor game.)
But I don't think this is what they meant to do. Because these are the developers who made Witcher 3. One of the very few open world games that actually is filled with story and has lots of great character interaction. And as I said before, the story missions in Cyberpunk are all great. This is the stuff they know how to do really well.
I don't think they intended to do Cyberpunk Skyrim. They probably wanted to make Cyberpunk Witcher 3. And when that got stuck in the muck and not getting anywhere, Cyberpunk Skyrim was the only thing they were able to slap together at short notice.

The whole situation makes me think of Anthem. Very similar issues, and I really suspect very similar causes.

[Eldan]

Morrowind has an amazing setting, complete wasted on a poor game.)

I hate that I have to agree with that. Skywind is looking increasingly amazing, though. Like, super good. (It's fully remodelled, rewritten and voiced Morrowind in the Skyrim engine).

[sihnfahl]

Lizzy Whizzy quest for example. (Though the last one feels really unfinished.)

It, like Sinnerman, has a minor footnote, but only if you watch a certain TV station. It reviews tech and braindances. And the reviewer gushes over the braindances.

[BRC]

That's true, but not a defense. I was considering that point myself. But when the game becomes better by ignoring specific parts of the content, then that content should not be in the game in the first place. Instead of upgrading the overall game experience, their inclusion is a downgrade.

I have to backpaddle a bit on the gigs all being the same, though. Only 90% of them are all the same. (But for the police stuff, it's 100% the same.)
There's the Peralez quests, the Flaming Crotch Man, the Korean guy who needs to be extracted from a cheap motel, the fridge in Kabuki, and the Lizzy Whizzy quest for example. (Though the last one feels really unfinished.) There are a couple of gigs that are different and have some dialog. And I liked them. If they were all like these, the mercenary life would have been a great idea.


Oh dear, you're right. It is a lot like Skyrim with Quickhacks. Though I have a lot of problem with the Bethesda formula personally. I don't think they ever made a single good game. (Morrowind has an amazing setting, complete wasted on a poor game.)
But I don't think this is what they meant to do. Because these are the developers who made Witcher 3. One of the very few open world games that actually is filled with story and has lots of great character interaction. And as I said before, the story missions in Cyberpunk are all great. This is the stuff they know how to do really well.
I don't think they intended to do Cyberpunk Skyrim. They probably wanted to make Cyberpunk Witcher 3. And when that got stuck in the muck and not getting anywhere, Cyberpunk Skyrim was the only thing they were able to slap together at short notice.

The whole situation makes me think of Anthem. Very similar issues, and I really suspect very similar causes.

Everybody dreams of making Witcher 3, but we get a lot of Skyrims for a reason. It's an easy formula for filling a game with Content.


The thing about Witcher 3 is that while all the listed Sidequests usually had some decent story about them, the game was also full of plenty of filler content. Random wolves and bears and bandits and drowners and such that served as Random Encounters while you were exploring the countryside. They were not labeled as "Missions", but that's what I see the NCPD missions as replacing.

There was no real equivalent for the basic "Gig" missions, things with a tiny bit of story to them, but no real writing work put into it besides "A mild scumbag wants you to kill a bigger Scumbag", and like I said, I didn't really mind them.


I'm positive that the current state of the game is the result of a ton of compromises, but I'm not convinced that the NCPD/Gig structure is the result of one vs some glorious potential version where every mission had the writing of the main quests.


Also, I don't really mind them? Like yeah, writing is good, but sometimes I want to just play around in the core gameplay loop a bit without necessarily diving into a Story. I don't really mind Skippable Mediocre Content. There are enough side missions for me to get my money's worth, so I don't feel like I was cheated out of a game. They're Not Good, but I don't think taking them out would necessarily improve the game that much.


Also Re: story, the Witcher had a huge advantage in that Geralt was a Character, while V is more of a blank-slate generic mercenary badass. That limits how much Story you can tell when your protagonist can't grow too much of a personality (I think they did an impressive job of making V expressive considering they stay firmly in the realm of "Generic Badass who wants to Kill People For Money")

[sihnfahl]

They were not labeled as "Missions", but that's what I see the NCPD missions as replacing.

The NCPD quests ... mm, I don't think they really had a witcher equivalent. It was either main quests, sub quests and random encounters.

Which is fulfilled by the Blue Star events on the minimap. Those crimes you observe in progress, but hadn't been dispatched. Interestingly enough, some of them even involve NCPD units, and you can assist. Can't tell you how many times I had NCPD vs Valentinos come up on my minimap.

I think they did an impressive job of making V expressive considering they stay firmly in the realm of "Generic Badass who wants to Kill People For Money")

Generic kick butt who wants to make money by any means, even if it's illegal. Killing not required for success. That Act I 'rescue the monk from Maelstrom' quest even flipped that.

Heck, even some of the Gigs where they wanted a scumbag, there are non-lethal options where you slap the unconscious baddie into the trunk of a car hired by the Fixer so they can ... deal with them in their own way. Rather than, you know, you just shooting them.

Which, with a tech sniper and ping, got ridiculous. Ping one enemy, you could scan for the ultimate target, charge up, headshot ... gig ended unless there was a 'no discovery' requirement.

[BRC]

Despite all my points in Crafting, I've been mostly using Power weapons. Smart Guns just didn't feel satisfying to use, and I don't feel like I've been finding good tech weapons since I started levling up.

[Eldan]

It's been a while since I played Witcher 3. Did they completely eliminate the "Kill 15 drowners/10 wolves/6 giant insects" quests? I know that Witchers 1+2 had a lot of those.

[BRC]

It's been a while since I played Witcher 3. Did they completely eliminate the "Kill 15 drowners/10 wolves/6 giant insects" quests? I know that Witchers 1+2 had a lot of those.

I don't recall any? not without a bit of narrative build-up anyway, but it's been a while and they wouldn't be memorable.

The quests were usually "A cattle/person has gone missing", Geralt investigates, figures out what the target is (So the more research you've done the more prep work you can do) and then you go kill a monster or monsters. I think there were a few that were just "Go kill some monsters", and if you strayed from the roads you'd encounter monsters aplenty.

There were certainly quests that came down to little more than "Go to a place and kill the things" with a bit of narrative around them (Similar to the Gigs) but I don't think there were any MMO style "Kill 10 drowners and come back to me" type quests.

[sihnfahl]

Despite all my points in Crafting, I've been mostly using Power weapons. Smart Guns just didn't feel satisfying to use, and I don't feel like I've been finding good tech weapons since I started levling up.

Well, smart weapons feel like cheating? All you have to do is point them at a target, pull the trigger, and you'll usually hit. Heck, I used Divided We Stand for the secret mission and barely took any damage. On Very Hard.

I think tech weapons suffer from the charge time if you're in a massive firefight. So about the only one I use is Breakthrough, and always through walls. When you're being assaulted on multiple fronts, their utility suffers.

[Calemyr]

Despite all my points in Crafting, I've been mostly using Power weapons. Smart Guns just didn't feel satisfying to use, and I don't feel like I've been finding good tech weapons since I started levling up.

Well, smart weapons feel like cheating? All you have to do is point them at a target, pull the trigger, and you'll usually hit. Heck, I used Divided We Stand for the secret mission and barely took any damage. On Very Hard.

I think tech weapons suffer from the charge time if you're in a massive firefight. So about the only one I use is Breakthrough, and always through walls. When you're being assaulted on multiple fronts, their utility suffers.

I think the three weapon types are designed to cater to different play styles. Power are for more skill-focused FPS-favoring players who enjoy enjoy the challenge of relying on instinct and talent to put the bullet where you want it, with the ricochet system being there for even more technical shenanigans. Tech are for out-of-the-box players who enjoy twisting the tactical battlefield to turn a massive numerical advantage into a rout. Smart weapons are for players who either don't feel comfortable with their running-and-gunning skills or just enjoy watching bullets curve mid-air to hit targets in deep cover. There's a lot to be said for all three styles, but one in particular is probably going to sing for you and there really isn't a "wrong" choice.

When it comes to tech weapons, the only four I've spent any time with are the Chaos pistol, Lizzie's Gun, the Nekomata/Breakthrough sniper rifle, and the Comrade's Hammer. Chaos is available early enough to enjoy when there aren't many good options. Lizzie's Gun is full auto when charged, and if you put stabilizer mod on it it can be outright nasty. Nekomata/Breakthrough are great sniper rifles when combined with Ping or the Threat Detector eye mod. That said, Comrade's Hammer is probably my favorite. It's a one-shot clip with a horrendous reload time, yes, but every shot is fully charged with no charge time (punches through walls like nothing), does absurd damage, and can be easily exploit some powerful perks. Best part? Since Breakthrough and Comrade's Hammer are crafted, you can craft new ones cheaper than you can upgrade old ones, so it's not hard at all to keep them up to date.

Smart weapons I like are really only Divided We Stand, because it's very effective, and Skippy, whose auto-levelling is a treat and the commentary is quite amusing, but the timed events on it are frustrating.

[KineticDiplomat]

Came back to the game for a second run. Decided to be a little more completionist and ran through with a street fem-V samurai as opposed to a corps male-V stealth-hacker.

Caveats up front, they cleaned up a lot (not all) of the bugs, and I never had a dog in the fight about social offense or lack thereof. I also don’t play it as GTA night city, so things like insta-cops aren’t an issue. If you have particularly strong opinions about those I doubt that’s changed.

But.....

Spoiler

Show

The story telling only gets better once you’re in the second run. Part of that is that the decision to make the main line quickly playable really breaks the game into four parts:

1. The early game up through Kompeki Plaza. Despite most of the origins being quick, the early game really is a pretty solid prologue. The story tells well, everything still feels cyberpunk AF, and you’re still in that pre-face melting stage that seems scrappy.

To go with that, the early game has a lot of early game love with variety in its gigs and some efforts at world building in all the little shards and files you find in between killing some gang types.

2. Then boom, the early mid game comes along. And here is where the game is the weakest. You get your Johnny shock, great opener, but then the main plot hurtles along pretty quick without a lot of time to hang flesh on bones.

This is exacerbated by being the part of the game where the gigs are often the least creative, and you have virtually no “Named Gigs” as I like to call the ones that expand into side stories. So the story is moving fast, maybe too fast, and the side content just appears to be blah slaughter 8 guys. Even the semi creative gigs with convo options, alternate solutions, etc really aren’t present. But if you can just get through that part...

3. Assuming you don’t race to OP55, all of a sudden the SL content takes a major step up. Real side quests with extended story lines, and not just the throat shoved ones. Gigs with multiple creative solutions, including just plain talking. Last play though I didn’t appreciate this phase as much, but because I can now go slow in certain spots because I’m fast in others, there is a ton to appreciate here.

So much in fact that if you aren’t poking around exploring you might miss it entirely. Take the Johnny-Rogue side quest chain. Already you need to be approaching the end of the main story - but you’ll be pushed into this and probably do it. But then you have the concert series side quests. Ok, you might play them but they already ask for a delay day or two while you do other things. And you would think you’re done, but...then Kerry has his Us Rocks chain that will only start some time after the concert series.

Even the one-shot gigs get better, from breaking patients out of mental hospitals to assaulting corpo buildings and infiltrating clubs, all with more character than the previous typically more straight forward “kill these 8 men”.

And on top of all that, you start seeing far more uses for your background origin to be used in problem solving.

All while your tracker keeps defaulting to OP55. Unless you really have the deliberate inclination to wait, not only are you missing a lot of the content, you are missing some of the highest quality content.

It’s in this phase of the game that the writers really show their chops with Witcher-esque stories, so it seems a crying shame that the system is set up to push you past it almost entirely and it takes a very deliberate decision to slow down to see so much of it.

4. And then we have the endings. Which I still think are completely genre appropriate, especially given Vik basically tells you how it’s gonna be. The video messages to V in the credits are particularly brutal for the later game characters...especially if you Don’t Fear the Reaper and go down Real Folk Blues style.

———

The issue is that if you go from 2 to 4, you actually miss huge swathes of both the story and the game. And the pacing leads you to make that error.

[BRC]

Came back to the game for a second run. Decided to be a little more completionist and ran through with a street fem-V samurai as opposed to a corps male-V stealth-hacker.

Caveats up front, they cleaned up a lot (not all) of the bugs, and I never had a dog in the fight about social offense or lack thereof. I also don’t play it as GTA night city, so things like insta-cops aren’t an issue. If you have particularly strong opinions about those I doubt that’s changed.

But.....

Spoiler

Show

The story telling only gets better once you’re in the second run. Part of that is that the decision to make the main line quickly playable really breaks the game into four parts:

1. The early game up through Kompeki Plaza. Despite most of the origins being quick, the early game really is a pretty solid prologue. The story tells well, everything still feels cyberpunk AF, and you’re still in that pre-face melting stage that seems scrappy.

To go with that, the early game has a lot of early game love with variety in its gigs and some efforts at world building in all the little shards and files you find in between killing some gang types.

2. Then boom, the early mid game comes along. And here is where the game is the weakest. You get your Johnny shock, great opener, but then the main plot hurtles along pretty quick without a lot of time to hang flesh on bones.

This is exacerbated by being the part of the game where the gigs are often the least creative, and you have virtually no “Named Gigs” as I like to call the ones that expand into side stories. So the story is moving fast, maybe too fast, and the side content just appears to be blah slaughter 8 guys. Even the semi creative gigs with convo options, alternate solutions, etc really aren’t present. But if you can just get through that part...

3. Assuming you don’t race to OP55, all of a sudden the SL content takes a major step up. Real side quests with extended story lines, and not just the throat shoved ones. Gigs with multiple creative solutions, including just plain talking. Last play though I didn’t appreciate this phase as much, but because I can now go slow in certain spots because I’m fast in others, there is a ton to appreciate here.

So much in fact that if you aren’t poking around exploring you might miss it entirely. Take the Johnny-Rogue side quest chain. Already you need to be approaching the end of the main story - but you’ll be pushed into this and probably do it. But then you have the concert series side quests. Ok, you might play them but they already ask for a delay day or two while you do other things. And you would think you’re done, but...then Kerry has his Us Rocks chain that will only start some time after the concert series.

Even the one-shot gigs get better, from breaking patients out of mental hospitals to assaulting corpo buildings and infiltrating clubs, all with more character than the previous typically more straight forward “kill these 8 men”.

And on top of all that, you start seeing far more uses for your background origin to be used in problem solving.

All while your tracker keeps defaulting to OP55. Unless you really have the deliberate inclination to wait, not only are you missing a lot of the content, you are missing some of the highest quality content.

It’s in this phase of the game that the writers really show their chops with Witcher-esque stories, so it seems a crying shame that the system is set up to push you past it almost entirely and it takes a very deliberate decision to slow down to see so much of it.

4. And then we have the endings. Which I still think are completely genre appropriate, especially given Vik basically tells you how it’s gonna be. The video messages to V in the credits are particularly brutal for the later game characters...especially if you Don’t Fear the Reaper and go down Real Folk Blues style.

———

The issue is that if you go from 2 to 4, you actually miss huge swathes of both the story and the game. And the pacing leads you to make that error.

Spoiler

Show

Thank you for this
I'm on 3, and have noticed an uptick in Good missions. I'm level 38 or so, but it's good to know that these missions that just opened up are much higher quality. I wish I'd pushed through part 2 faster, instead, since I wasn't that interested in the main plot quests, I dawdled there and did a bunch of the mediocre gigs.

[Calemyr]

Spoiler

Show

Thank you for this
I'm on 3, and have noticed an uptick in Good missions. I'm level 38 or so, but it's good to know that these missions that just opened up are much higher quality. I wish I'd pushed through part 2 faster, instead, since I wasn't that interested in the main plot quests, I dawdled there and did a bunch of the mediocre gigs.

The best stories are the character arcs. Rogue, Kerry, River, Pan Am, and Judy. These arcs are several missions long, anchored around solid characters, and not reliant on romancing the character in question. After that you have the main quest, which is at least mostly interesting. Then the gigs, which run the gamut between engaging one-offs to lightly fluffed time killers. Finally the NCPD things, which may have a little storytelling with the layout of events and the mind numbingly long notes you can find, but are really only there for a little exercise and some minor to decent rewards.

Personally, I liked the NCPD stuff. Yes, it's unabashed filler, but so are breadsticks and I like breadsticks. They're an easy way to make money and test weapons or refine builds, very short and honestly kinda relaxing due to not having requirements like stealth or non-lethal. The loot is generally pretty weak, but uncommon and rare cyberware can be obtained before you ever have the street cred to buy them, at the point they might actually be useful. And the criminal operations tend to have schematics for pretty powerful iconic weapons. I find the game becomes infinitely more boring once the NCPD markers dry out.

[BRC]

I'm always terrified of outleveling everything, but considering that I've died in seconds from "Very Low Danger" missions when I was being an idiot, I'm less worried about things. It mostly means I can just one-shot people with pistols instead of having to headshot them.