I played it at release on PS4 and then with Phantom Liberty on XSX. It was awful game with a great story then. Today it’s a pretty good game with one of the greatest stories in this medium. It’s often brought up as a comeback story for CDPR but lack of polish still rears its head in places. For example clothing pieces still have rarity label based on how much defensive stat it gave prior to patch 2.0 (which detached armour rating from the clothes).
one of the greatest stories in this medium
I mean admittedly I don’t read cyberpunk as a genre, but as an avid reader I find that hard to believe. My two standout sub-stories are the intro heist and the expansion’s main story, and while those are awesome, they’re not exactly literary masterpieces. The rest of the game’s story is… amateurish? But not in a bad way? Like, it’s servicable as the thin motivational veneer you expect from an open world game, and doesn’t stand out either way, which is more or less what you want from your open world story: To not get in the way. The last few parts are quite bad though and show how much the story must have been cut apart and pieced together to fit a release date.
Is it really outstandingly good comparing other cyberpunk works?
I was mostly talking about Phantom Liberty part - it is much more interesting and better executed than anything in the base game.
Oh yeah definitely. The expansion was such a cool thing, and the limited scope really helps it rather than hurting it.
One of the best games of the last decade. Top-5 easy.
I played it since launch. Originally on a Xbone, and my biggest complaint back then was minimap lag. You wouldn’t believe how many turns I missed.
But yeah, rough launch. Made a storybook comeback. Now it’s incredible. My biggest gripe now is that it doesn’t have NG+. I went on Pavel’s streams and begged for NG+ for 2 years. All I wanted was Levels. Not SC, not money, not 'ware, not unique weapons. I just wanted to start the game at max level. They heard NG+ and thought we wanted the NG+ from Witcher 3. Which I actually hated. Cuz all the enemies get a buff and all your specced out end game gear is outclassed by garbage you pick up on the side of the road by the time you leave White Orchard. But that’s not what we or at least I wanted.
Played it again right after they stopped releasing updates this year. If you don’t play it expecting an RPG or immersive sim, it’s good.
I like Phantom Liberty even more. They didn’t attempt to compromise on anything regarding the game genre anymore and just made it a shooter action adventure with a cinematic story, which plays in it own little open world area.
2077 is one of the few AAA games that doesn’t feel completely soulless. It could’ve delved deeper into the philosophical “what if” aspect of the Cyberpunk genre though.
Also they should’ve made the badlands story part with Panam it’s own game, in retrospect it’s what I enjoyed the most out of the base game.
It shouldn’t be forgiven for releasing in such a broken state. Do we really think the rest of the game industry didn’t notice how well it did? How little they’re willing to do if it means still getting that money rolling in?
It is OK, word-building, the aesthetics and overall visual and architecture are the strongest points. I cannot comprehend the people who call it one of the best games ever and etc.
I never played the 1.x versions, I just picked it up last year (or beginning of this year) and steams says I put up 123 hours in it. So I love the background, the cyberpunk of it all, love that the city really feels vertical and you can constantly be in aww looking at it. It so good that I constantly decides to walk from one place to the other so you can get more of the environment. The conversations you here from the NPCs are great, the backstory of side quests are great, many very memorable, a lot of it very sad, specially the NCPD scanner quests because you learn stuff from dead bodies. I cannot say much of the main quests because I am an idiot and decided to clean up all NCPD scanner and gigs because I could not ignore the calls while going from place to place in the city, but I suspect It is good since the NCPD scanner, the most filler of filler quests had a bunch of nice writing in it.
And all that good makes it much more sad all the shortcomings. Like someone else mentioned you can clearly see the leftovers off all the things that were never finished. For the gameplay systems and mechanics it is the classic wide and shallow, there is so much stuff that just means nothing. For example, during quests and at your home and some places you can stack up in ammo, but you actually is never in any danger to be short on ammo, like, never never. So it is just clutter. On the leftover thing, The other comment mentioned clothes, it is so much clothes but 99% of them do nothing and the ones that do are like almost irrelevant. All clothes have levels/rarity but it means nothing, um can have the same shirt in all rarities for example. You can open the hood and trunk of all cars but there is never anything in them, it is just an interactive thing that does nothing. IT is specially weird because you have vans with cargo and etc and except when it is a quest item there is never any loot in the cago of the vans. Weapons upgrades are pointless, must of the mods does not even makes sense for a weapon to have. The thing that you cannot reuse a mod from one weapon to the other or that you cannot change the scope from a sniper makes no sense in a world that you can literally change your cybernetic eyes. The customization on weapons are so minimal that they might as well not having them. You have stuff like silences can only be put on pistols and one type of assault rifle/smg (I am not good with names of types of weapons). You have sniper rifles but they (with one exception) all makes sound and attract the enemy so using them in the way you see in movies is kinda pointless. Enemies always know exactly were you are when you fire a gun, it would be one thing to use a sniper and everyone on the place be in high alert or looking for you, but no, you can be as far away as you like if you use a sniper they you immediately start firing in your direction.
You can see in the level design of the gigs that you can approach a quest with multiple options, like stealth or go head first our using other non-violent means, which is great, but much of it was not fleshed out, for start the outcome is 99% of the time the same so there is no incentive to really do one over the other even in any build that you choose. I made the mistake to make the classic stealth-archer and It is almost the same difficult to get it blasting gun. I call it a mistake because it is super easy. Of the non fleshed out options it jumps to attention the stealth ones, There is a lot of places to hide bodies, things that you can remote activate to kill enemies, to distract them, etc, but they are never in the correct place, so they mean nothing almost, and there is almost never a reason to hide the bodies. You have like ducts to crawl to get to place without being noticed, but if you just crouch and kill everyone. There is no reward to not kill everyone with some rare exception, which makes all the level design to make it possible to sneak in a base or den useless. You can also take down enemies without killing them but them again, there is no benefit nor drawback. They are as good as dead.
I think the graphics looks great, but I don´t play many games and specially AAA games so I don´t have much to compare, my friend saw I playing and said they are like average, not bad but just what you would expect of a modern game, nothing exceptional. But even if the graphics are not special what they do with it is great, all the architecture and stuff.
There attention to the world is so great yet you meet the same NPC model like 3 times in the same place, it is so repetitive, it is weird. Like, not only the same exact body but the same clothes. Why not randomize a little more? If they at least put an in-universe reason, like people can modify themself to looklike some predefined avatars. It is worst for the children, for some time I even didn´t think there were children in the game. which would be better in my opinion, but you see the same like 3 models everywhere.
I could go on on the missing stuff, like the public transportation (later half-assed included in the 2.x) or any type of flying transportation. That it is thing, you see a lot of flying vehicles, but you cannot drive or get in any of them. Similarly, there is a lot of motocycles but they are always parked. You never see them in transit.
I mentioned that the backstory of the gigs and NCPD scanner quests are awesome but the quests itself all look the same, they have more or less 3 types and that is it. Also it is very much bullshit that in a cyberpunk game you are basically pro-cop without option of otherwise. You can help the NCPD with the scanner quest but you have no benefit in going against the cops, they don´t even drop loot. At least you can steal some of their cars sometimes. You are literally a criminal and there is no positive aspect in going against cops, which is specially weird because the game you wand your allys are always talking bad of the cops like in the movies like “I never talk to a pig” style of things, but the gameplay does not reflect that. If in the game the cops were somehow some moral/ethical beacon, but it is cyberpunk, the cops in the game are terrible, a lot of them very corrupt and such.
There is so much more, annoying bugs like the one that does not show correctly if your gun has silencer in it or not. Some of it can be mitigated with mods, wich is nice, but you should not need a bunch of mods to play the game without getting frustrated.
With all that said, it is a fun game, I think the story, wordbuilding an visuals are enough to warrant a play trough I guess.
Thank you for your detailed comment
Sorry if it was kinda hambly, I wrote it yesterday but then step away from the PC before finishing or proofreading it and today I kinda just hit send 😅
It’s a work of art, one of my favorite games (and dlc included).
I have a strong PC and play in 4k tho, with tons of mods to improve stuff or change some mechanics. Better textures and loads of clothes as well.
I finished the game several times and have probably a lot more than 100h in it. I still play regularly to simply enjoy life in Night City, and kill some dudes…
I’m in love with that game and I believe anybody should play it at least once in life.
I don’t want to put you down or anything, but this is very surprising to me. 100+ hours from multiple play throughs feels really small to me. You clearly love the game. So I am wondering why was your first time so short? When I love a game, I want to experience as much of the content as I can in my first playthrough. It took me 185 hours to finish Cyberpunk 2077 without the DLC. I haven’t played that one yet. I am waiting for a new PC so that I can play the game on max settings.
I know you are right. I said that number from out of my ass as I was at work.
I just checked gog and I am actually at 201h and 7 minutes. My first play through was probably around 120 to 140h but I honestly don’t remember.
Funny enough, the actual save I use is from my first playthrough, the last save right before the last mission. As if I don’t want to abandon this specific V (female badass street kid net runner with katana).
I’m with this. Totally agree.
What game is there that does this kind of gameplay better?
Only the original Deus Ex has captured this genre so well.
The Revision mod made DE even better.
Worth a replay with it on if you haven’t already
What are the chances, I was just looking into installing it again. Here’s a handy article I found about the various mods, for those interested.
I will never tire of beating 7 shades out of Anna Navarre on that plane. Though the killswitch method is flat out hilarious.
Any mod reccos? I started it before the DLC and only played for like four hours.
I like the ones that add a second operating system cyberware. It can be seen as cheating but you can have a netrunner deck and a sandevistan at the same time (or whatever double cybwrware you want to play with).
I think it’s cyberware EX. I use the collection function of Nexus mods (ordered by rating) so I don’t have to hand manage hundreds of mods.
Thank yoooou!
I have it on the PS5 and did four playthroughs already. No other game since the last two Deus Ex games has captured the spirit of cyberpunk so damn well. And with CP77 being open world, it is so easy and nice to immerse yourself in the world. One of my favorite games of all time.
I played at release and you had to do cop shit all the time. Not very punk at all. Had that changed?
It’s very cyberpunk that police work would be outsourced to random mercs.
You know what. Props. In all The Discourse why did I never hear / think of that. It IS cyberpunk af.
I never really thought of Robocop as being cyberpunk either. It is though.
I tried it for the first time this year, I put in around 10 hours to try and get into it and honestly I found it pretty dull. I didn’t think the combat felt particularly satisfying and the story as far as I got in it did nothing to interest me or draw me in.
I’m not saying it is a bad game because I certainly dont think that but for me personally just nothing clicked, it felt like a slog just to get through the 10 or so hours I put in and I dont have enough time to force myself to like games any more so I just moved on.
A friend let me borrow their PS4 version. Word of warning: Do not play it on PS4. I got through it, but damn if that cobbled together abandoned mess didn’t take away from the experience at times. I dread to think how bad it must’ve been at launch! It was the side content that was mostly broken; I recall the taxi missions just constantly glitching out. The music on the radio didn’t work properly and I was teleported to the other side of the map for no reason at one point.
Despite that the story, atmosphere, design of the city and characters are all great. I’m tempted to get it on PS5 or Steam (with the DLC) at some point to play through it again properly.
I think my brain is stuck in 2018 because some voice in the back of my head is telling me I should be excited for when cyberpunk and starfield come out, lol. Maybe I’ll get to cyberpunk soon but the backlog is yuge
Don’t forget to save the man with the burning crotch!
I recently restarterd my playthrough (first time touching the game since 2.0 dropped) so I’m not done with the game yet but my very brief thoughts are: I like the new content and technical improvements, I’m not entirely sold on gameplay changes and have more fun with the old mechanics to some extent (I actually reinstalled the legacy version to compare). There are some things I really appreciate in the latest version but over all legacy is more up my alley.
It’s still a great game and probably will end up as one of my favorites despite all its issues. Will see how I feel after I’m done with it.
I’ve been playing it slowly for the past few months after finally getting a modern GPU, and am going through the endings now, so my impressions are still fresh.
Overall I enjoyed the game, but it’s possible to see that it could have been much better. There are still occasional immersion-breaking bugs like floating items and characters. Some systems are clearly leftovers of bigger plans, for example clothing that barely has any purpose other than roleplaying and taking pics of the character in photo mode. Gameplay can be pretty fun depending on your preferences and how you build the character, that was nice. I do agree that it’s not particularly deep.
Story and writing is what people usually praise about CP2077 + PL, but after finishing the game I can say that I was occasionally baffled and disappointed. Some things were clearly not developed to full potential, possibly because of time/budget constraint. Quests mentioning some areas and characters that are involved, but you can’t go and examine those. Some are pretty damn dumb if examined logically. Endings look pretty cool in isolation, but they contradict each other when compared. In pretty much every ending V is told that they’re going to die, but reasons differ. Alt claims that the body was changed to that of Johnny, and the immune system would reject V (which is also nonsense, in the game’s world an engram is data that can be written to a blank brain, why would data be rejected). In Arasaka endings we see that Saburo needs a body that is already genetically close to him, so he uses his son. Why not use a clone? This also contradicts what Alt says about nanites modifying the body. Arasaka-related characters also claim that V’s body was damaged by the Relic, that’s why even though the surgery was a success, they’ll die. Tumors and DNA damage. But somehow if Johnny takes over the body he can continue to live in it no problemo.
A dark and depressing theme doesn’t automatically make the story great, it still has to be logically coherent.
It was okay.
Didn’t really like the ending(s). I think one of the lead guys was like “cyberpunk can’t have happy endings”, so I guess they never read Neuromancer.
Gameplay was so-so, but I fixed some egregious problems with a mod. People who thought it was going to be life changing were living in a dream land.
A solid game in its current state. Probably one of the best games of the decade for me, just not in top 5. Has that “once you start playing, suddenly it’s 3 hours later” factor. Extremely atmospheric world design. Lots of great writing too.
Now, it does have the annoying thing that it sometimes keeps reminding me of games that did some aspect better. For example: Vehicle physics feel completely hokey. (“Man, I wish I was playing Saints Row 3/4”) Can’t really go exploring everywhere, would have loved to explore more rooftops and such. (“Man, I’ve got to get back to Mirror’s Edge”) Not exactly a prime stealth game in accordance with the laws of the art form. (“Man, Deus Ex was the shit, got to play it”)
Man, I love the vehicle handling. It’s far from perfect but I much prefer the weightiness of Cyberpunk (or GTA IV) over more “Hollywood” approach of most games. I realize I’m in a minority on this one but I hope they keep it in the next game (just with extra polish, obviously).
Same. I like feeling every bump.