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Water Chip? Been There, Done That
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So, Cyberpunk 2077... the game that came out 4 years ago in 2020 and was widely known for many of it's bugs and glitches. Recently, I decided to give the game a spin, since it was on sale and after playing 50 hours of this game, I have decided to share what I liked, what I didn't like, what I noticed, etc. It's not a proper review since I haven't finished the game and barely touched the main quest, focusing on all the sidequets instead, which is why I won't be giving any score for the game.
TLDR: Cyberpunk 2077 is a decent looter shooter game with some rpg elements, but not a GOTY at all.
RPG ELEMENTS
Let's start with RPG tag or how the game claims to be an RPG. I am going to be honest, the game is as much rpg as notFallout 3/4 or Skyrim are. That is, it is a game that you only play once and forget about it's existence. You start the game with one of 3 backgrounds: Nomad, Streetkid and Corpo-Rat. All of these have got their unique dialogue options for different situations, but none of them really matter. In fact, vast majority of the choices you make in the game don't matter or have got barely any effect on the world around you.
You can go all around the Night City, doing sidequests, gigs, etc. However, you will not see any tangible effects of your actions. Sure, there were a few quests, which gave you a nod to your choices or where reminded of your actions, but it never amounted to more than a few dialogue options. Case in point, first act of the game is spent doing a 'heist'. I won't say more than that, but no matter what you do, what background you chose, what dialogue options are made, the result is always the same. Though, to be fair, there were some situations where your actions mattered, but the consequences of said actions were barely noticable, mostly in sidequests.
MAIN STORY
While I haven't played much of the main plot. I did enjoy the writing, it was solid. Definitely one of the strongest suits of Cyberpunk 2077. Some cutscenes were truly moving and well directed, similar in quality to Baldur's Gate 3. I have got no major complaints here, outside of previously mentioned RPG elements. Phantom Liberty (a dlc for the game) deserves special mention, since it's main story kept me on the edge so much, I couldn't stop playing.
SIDEQUESTS AND GIGS
Oh boy, this is probably one of the weakest aspects of the game. Gigs are basically mini quest, which often revolve going around to single area, clearing it out (or sneaking past guards) and then moving on. Most of them only give you a bunch of eddies (currency, stands for eurodollars). They are... dull, boring, tedious for the most part. There were a few good ones, but most of them were forgetable. In fact, I would call them "Fodder Quests", since this is what they are. A bunch of tiny quests that you complete to give you something to do.
Sidequests are different from gigs in the aspect they tend to be a bit longer and better written. One of the better ones was being able to ride a rollercoaster or attending a funeral of a character from the game, whom I WON'T SPOIL. Definitely a step up from the gigs, but there are too few of them, which is a shame.
CHARACTER PROGRESSION
How to say it... it's... overdesigned. The game features 3 different ways for your character to get stronger. First and foremost are character atributes, 5 of them (Body, Reflex, Technical Ability, Intelligence and Cool). Each time you level up, you can increase one of said atributes, capping out at 20. These atributes allow you to pick and choose perks as you play. You can swap your perks out at any point, but atributes can only be reset once per game. Some of the perks can be quite impactful and having high atributes can come up in a dialogue, but it rarely amounts to anything useful.
Next one up, Cyberware and boy did they screw the porch with this one. At levels 10 and up, you can start adding proper implants into you, some of which can be gamechanging. One of the most important ones is operating system. It allows you to choose if you want to be hacker, melee berserker, bullet time samurai or something else. You can also get double jump and few other bits and pieces, like arms that fire rockets or can turn heads into pancakes.
However, there are plenty of slots that just add small bonuses like: 5.0-7.5% Cooldown instantly for all cyberware after neutralizing an enemy. Combined they can be quite impactful, standalone they are rarely substantial. On top of that you can get up to: 24 implants in your entire body, based on your cyberware capacity, which is where things get really stupid.
In order to increase your capacity you need to: Level up, get perks from technical ability or RNG. That's right. One of the most important ways you can power up your character can be dropped by any random enemy and if you happen to not pick it up, you will PERMAMENTLY lose it (up to 54, which is HUGE). Supposedly it was fixed, but I wouldn't bet my life on it. You cap out around 360, so without those shards you are stuck at 300, that's a really bad design. Those things should be rare gig/quest rewards, not random drop by enemies.
Last but not least are skills: headhunter, Netrunner, Shinobi, Solo, Engineer. Think of them like skills from Skyrim, which improve your character. However, you will not be able to max them out anytime soon. My longest lasting character had level 58 and a skill of solo at 30 at that point, even though, I focused on it for the most part. Really not a fan of 3 separate paths to get your character stronger.
SCALING AND LOOT
This is one of the main problems of the game, which really took away most of the fun I had with the game. The game scales pretty much EVERYTHING to you. It's almost as bad as notFallout 4 in that regard. You get stronger, but so do enemies and some encounters can be really frustrating, since you can't comeback stronger and deal with them that way. Worse still is the loot. For example:
-In my first playthrough, I did all the sidequests and ignored a boxing quest, coming back to it at level 40+. When I won, I got a unique tier 5 sniper rifle.
-On my second playthrough, I did the quest sooner and the tier 5 became tier 3, which I then had to upgrade.
Do you see the problem? The game punishes the player for finding unique weapons early on in the game. In fact, no matter what you do, all enemies will be using the same type of weapons as you do. Level 1 to 10? Tier 1 weapons. 11 to 20? Tier 2 weapons, etc. It doesn't matter where you look, what you do, everything scales to you. Even rewards for gigs and some quests! I really don't like it to say the least.
Final thoughts:
So, to sum up, is Cyberpunk 2077 a bad game? No, but it suffers from Skyrim Syndrome and really, if you were to trim all the fat, get rid of half the gigs and expand upon the rest, it would be much better. As it is, I wouldn't give it more than 8/10 at best. I had fun at times, but if there are two words that describe everything besides main story in Cyberpunk 2077, they would be: "Forgettable" and "Inconsequencial".
Also, some bugs still remain, like not being able to fast travel ever again.
TLDR: Cyberpunk 2077 is a decent looter shooter game with some rpg elements, but not a GOTY at all.
RPG ELEMENTS
Let's start with RPG tag or how the game claims to be an RPG. I am going to be honest, the game is as much rpg as notFallout 3/4 or Skyrim are. That is, it is a game that you only play once and forget about it's existence. You start the game with one of 3 backgrounds: Nomad, Streetkid and Corpo-Rat. All of these have got their unique dialogue options for different situations, but none of them really matter. In fact, vast majority of the choices you make in the game don't matter or have got barely any effect on the world around you.
You can go all around the Night City, doing sidequests, gigs, etc. However, you will not see any tangible effects of your actions. Sure, there were a few quests, which gave you a nod to your choices or where reminded of your actions, but it never amounted to more than a few dialogue options. Case in point, first act of the game is spent doing a 'heist'. I won't say more than that, but no matter what you do, what background you chose, what dialogue options are made, the result is always the same. Though, to be fair, there were some situations where your actions mattered, but the consequences of said actions were barely noticable, mostly in sidequests.
MAIN STORY
While I haven't played much of the main plot. I did enjoy the writing, it was solid. Definitely one of the strongest suits of Cyberpunk 2077. Some cutscenes were truly moving and well directed, similar in quality to Baldur's Gate 3. I have got no major complaints here, outside of previously mentioned RPG elements. Phantom Liberty (a dlc for the game) deserves special mention, since it's main story kept me on the edge so much, I couldn't stop playing.
SIDEQUESTS AND GIGS
Oh boy, this is probably one of the weakest aspects of the game. Gigs are basically mini quest, which often revolve going around to single area, clearing it out (or sneaking past guards) and then moving on. Most of them only give you a bunch of eddies (currency, stands for eurodollars). They are... dull, boring, tedious for the most part. There were a few good ones, but most of them were forgetable. In fact, I would call them "Fodder Quests", since this is what they are. A bunch of tiny quests that you complete to give you something to do.
Sidequests are different from gigs in the aspect they tend to be a bit longer and better written. One of the better ones was being able to ride a rollercoaster or attending a funeral of a character from the game, whom I WON'T SPOIL. Definitely a step up from the gigs, but there are too few of them, which is a shame.
CHARACTER PROGRESSION
How to say it... it's... overdesigned. The game features 3 different ways for your character to get stronger. First and foremost are character atributes, 5 of them (Body, Reflex, Technical Ability, Intelligence and Cool). Each time you level up, you can increase one of said atributes, capping out at 20. These atributes allow you to pick and choose perks as you play. You can swap your perks out at any point, but atributes can only be reset once per game. Some of the perks can be quite impactful and having high atributes can come up in a dialogue, but it rarely amounts to anything useful.
Next one up, Cyberware and boy did they screw the porch with this one. At levels 10 and up, you can start adding proper implants into you, some of which can be gamechanging. One of the most important ones is operating system. It allows you to choose if you want to be hacker, melee berserker, bullet time samurai or something else. You can also get double jump and few other bits and pieces, like arms that fire rockets or can turn heads into pancakes.
However, there are plenty of slots that just add small bonuses like: 5.0-7.5% Cooldown instantly for all cyberware after neutralizing an enemy. Combined they can be quite impactful, standalone they are rarely substantial. On top of that you can get up to: 24 implants in your entire body, based on your cyberware capacity, which is where things get really stupid.
In order to increase your capacity you need to: Level up, get perks from technical ability or RNG. That's right. One of the most important ways you can power up your character can be dropped by any random enemy and if you happen to not pick it up, you will PERMAMENTLY lose it (up to 54, which is HUGE). Supposedly it was fixed, but I wouldn't bet my life on it. You cap out around 360, so without those shards you are stuck at 300, that's a really bad design. Those things should be rare gig/quest rewards, not random drop by enemies.
Last but not least are skills: headhunter, Netrunner, Shinobi, Solo, Engineer. Think of them like skills from Skyrim, which improve your character. However, you will not be able to max them out anytime soon. My longest lasting character had level 58 and a skill of solo at 30 at that point, even though, I focused on it for the most part. Really not a fan of 3 separate paths to get your character stronger.
SCALING AND LOOT
This is one of the main problems of the game, which really took away most of the fun I had with the game. The game scales pretty much EVERYTHING to you. It's almost as bad as notFallout 4 in that regard. You get stronger, but so do enemies and some encounters can be really frustrating, since you can't comeback stronger and deal with them that way. Worse still is the loot. For example:
-In my first playthrough, I did all the sidequests and ignored a boxing quest, coming back to it at level 40+. When I won, I got a unique tier 5 sniper rifle.
-On my second playthrough, I did the quest sooner and the tier 5 became tier 3, which I then had to upgrade.
Do you see the problem? The game punishes the player for finding unique weapons early on in the game. In fact, no matter what you do, all enemies will be using the same type of weapons as you do. Level 1 to 10? Tier 1 weapons. 11 to 20? Tier 2 weapons, etc. It doesn't matter where you look, what you do, everything scales to you. Even rewards for gigs and some quests! I really don't like it to say the least.
Final thoughts:
So, to sum up, is Cyberpunk 2077 a bad game? No, but it suffers from Skyrim Syndrome and really, if you were to trim all the fat, get rid of half the gigs and expand upon the rest, it would be much better. As it is, I wouldn't give it more than 8/10 at best. I had fun at times, but if there are two words that describe everything besides main story in Cyberpunk 2077, they would be: "Forgettable" and "Inconsequencial".
Also, some bugs still remain, like not being able to fast travel ever again.
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