I purchased the game and played through at launch, despite (and partly because of) the bugs. I admit, there was annoyance, but humor as well at the random naked t-pose while on a bike.
I also had (and still have) a 3090, so got to play at basically max settings (except ray tracing).
It was fun. I did another play through when they released the RT overdrive update and enjoyed it just as much. Didn’t end up using RT overdrive after the first hour or so as the performance/quality wasn’t there on a 3440x1440 display (either bad frame rate, or super low res).
Nice! Envious of people who can play it on ray tracing! RT loooks super nice on photo mode.
Nice, push it. I still haven’t played it. Is the fixed up game pretty worth it? I don’t want no spoilers. How open world is everything?
I will share my experience… I played the game the week it launched on PC. Played a few hours, forgot about it.
Came back to it this week, started fresh. It really is phenomenal. The story is incredible. So much so, that I find myself doing ANYTHING to keep the game going without progressing. The little side quests I do are so engrossing, I forget they’re not part of the main story line. I played for hours and was blown away before the words “cyberpunk 2077” scrolled across the screen and I realized I had only completed the intro.
It really is a wonderful world that feels alive. I feel like the builds are fun and actually feel rewarded for trying new things. (I was a hardcore wow player where min maxing was so essential. It’s so refreshing to play a single player game where I can actually fuck around and try to new/different things).
So yeah. The game didn’t grab me the first time. Second time around and it’s easily in my top 10.
Plus Panam.
Hahaha, that last line…
You convinced me to give it a go now! Managed to wait out the hype and all the bugs^^
Oh great. Okay, I’m in, thanks
The game is in a much better state now than when it first launched. And the open world is pretty gorgeous! Occasionally I’ll boot up the game, hop on a motorcycle, turn on the radio, and just cruise around the city without a goal in mind. Very fun environments to explore, and I’ll often end up catching myself finding little spots that I’ve never seen before, even after completing all the main and side quests.
Oh I love that, going around a world(usually Morrowind) and then seeing a cave behind a waterfall I didn’t notice before or something like that.
Thanks
The game is so good. But I might be biased because I enjoyed the game since day 1. How open world is everything? For me there’s a lot to explore, some corners tells a story of what happened there even though you can’t see any shards that you can read what happened, you can see some traces of what went through and that for me is what made the city alive. (People pointed out that the city is dead because NPCs don’t have daily routines/cycles and they are dumb) Maybe I am just easy to please. Anyways, some doors are locked for obvious performance reasons.
(People pointed out that the city is dead because NPCs don’t have daily routines/cycles and they are dumb)
The issue is mainly that they (and the city overall) don’t really react in a way that has been established by open world city games since like… GTA3?
NPCs didn’t have a range of reactions to aggression or being bumped, they wouldn’t start fights, some of the seated ones wouldn’t even run away when gunfire goes off nearby they’d just stay seated and scream. The police system was obviously hellishly bad with cops just teleporting in to fight you, no chase/escape gameplay, no real anything.
The sandbox basically fails to deliver standard features of the open world city sandbox that have existed in every open world city game for 15 years.
The story content is good, and plays really well. The issue is that the world and interacting with it functionally feels like a diorama that you’re not supposed to touch. Like a background in a movie where the walls will fall over if you touch them.
Compare to how the world interacts with the player in GTA5 or RDR2 and it’s massively underwhelming, which is what people were expecting in terms of quality and polish. It’s a real shame because the game is gorgeous and tonnes of effort clearly went into its world and story. I personally have some other issues with it, like the “punk” aspect not really being present because half the studio are far-right PiS voters but it’s a Polish studio so I expected that. Trigger really demonstrated how this franchise should look when you handle it from the properly left-wing “punk” angle that the cyberpunk genre is supposed to have, fully committing with no both-sides or confusion about it.
Yep, I get all of that. Encountered some of that specially the police but it didnt really bothered me much since I also hated police chase since GTA 3. I had fun with the NPC reactions specially day 1 patches because I will scare them then chase them and switch to photomode to capture the moment like a maniac. Lol The set-up pieces on corners of Night city, like diorama as you said is what I appreciated. Maybe it’s just me but I really liked it.
I think there’s so much more you can do with the setting and the sandbox though. The basics of a city sandbox involve the police, fire and ambulance response to problems in the city.
There should be private fire crews, and they should compete with each other. Fires that break out should have multiple private fire companies come out to them and compete for putting out the fire. This should turn into a disaster obviously because they just shoot the shit out of each other.
Ambulance teams should obviously be Trauma Team. The scene where you hand over the woman from the bathtub to Trauma Team should have been the way they work ALWAYS. They should be scary heavily geared medics that don’t fuck around about killing you to save some corpo you’ve injured, they should show up before the police in cases of corpos because Trauma Team are more efficient than the cops, and not over-stretched.
The cops should have a real chase system, and show significantly more signs of being overstretched in the city.
Areas of the world should react realistically to player inputs, rather than feeling like a diorama they should feel like living spaces.
If these had been nailed properly along with modtools the modscene for the game could have been better than Skyrim. Especially with all the locked doors everywhere for modders to add content with.
On the non-technical side of things. I find CDPR’s cyberpunk to be a little confused. Sometimes it doesn’t remember that this world is hell and it goes to “coool futureeeee”, effectively having the aesthetic trappings of the genre but trying to pretend that the world is good and likeable. Trigger’s show on the other hand is never confused about the world, it’s a living hell that nobody should ever admire or think is cool and it never strays from that. This isn’t really very surprising given that everyone working at Trigger is a communist though lmao. You can see the difference between half of CDPR being right wing who actually admire this future libertarian hell city vs Trigger’s studio full of commies.
Btw, how did you do that boxed reply? Looks cool!
That’s just a quote, it’s the same formatting as it was on reddit, just put > at the start of a line.
I have to disagree heavily. RDR2, and GTA5 are completely unreactive and uncaring of the player. That’s been my problem with all Rockstar games from the start.
The closest thing to reactive stuff in RDR2 is the goddamn annoying timer that looks at “how long since last player interaction” and if it’s been too long, it’ll throw at you one of a ten or so random events (woman with a horse, prison escape, etc) to make sure you are engaged.
Rockstar have this thing with their games, there is lots of freedom to do shit that doesn’t matter, and there is a B movie inside the game. Never shall the two meet. The gameplay is doing random shit in GTA, and the story is extremely fixed missions with very specific actions you do as you play through this B movie.
Other than progressing the plot, nothing changes in the world. Nothing you do in Rockstar games matter, unless it happens inside this B movie.
I mean, isn’t this like something that Rockstar was criticized for like ten years ago? Cyberpunk 2077 is not as reactive as you’d like, but it’s at least on par with Rockstar games.
Whether the NPCs react as well, I can’t really argue about since I don’t remember GTA, et al, well enough.
Add in your take on the political leanings of several hundred strong company en masse, and I’m not sure if your take has a lot of points worth the read.
Cyberpunk 2077 is not as reactive as you’d like, but it’s at least on par with Rockstar games.
Wtf, have you actually played both? Like at all? This statement is utterly absurd. The walking NPCs in Cyberpunk literally despawn as soon as you look in the opposite direction to them and then turn back, you can not be serious.
That’s got nothing to do with “reactive”. Although it seems absurd that I would have to even clarify this for someone.
I don’t see your PiS angle at all. Night City is pretty faithful to Mike Pondsmith’s vision, and if he didn’t think so, he wouldn’t be spreading conspiracy theories on Morrow Rock.
I was playing the game 20 years ago it is absolutely not. This is obviously explainable by the fact that half of Poland are literally fascists these days and anyone in europe understands that.
Okay, definitely still sounds like it’s worth checking out. Thanks
I posted another comment in the thread, but yes, very much worth it in my opinion. There’s plenty of playthrough footage that’d help you figure out if you would like the play styles (melee brute, ranged sniper, close combat gunner, netrunner to name a few and any mix you can think of)
You might want to wait for a sale though, I’d expect one close or at release of phantom liberty, which is also going to coincide with a patch that massively changes the base game.
Got it, thanks. When is that psych getting released?
At this point it’s legit very good. However, if you’ve waited this long you might as well wait a few more months for phantom liberty to come out as they’re overhauling a lot of the core game to make it even better.
Ah, someone else said this. Is there a good article you’ve read about this? I can wait a few months if the changes will be significant
Here’s one that talks about it > https://gamerant.com/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-all-changes-cybernetics-skill-trees/
Much appreciated
I got the game very early on. Even bought a pc for it. Was glorious. Actually, I had less bugs before they „fixed“ everything but its not a lot now.
Think gta in the future. Cool story, insane graphics. Only downside is that you have to start with the story and it feels kind of long until you really get out there. After that you‘re free and can do everything else before advancing the story, finishing the game.
I played through three times I think. The different fighting styles are very cool as well. Completely different gameplay. I.e. hacker, mantis, rambo, double 0 agent, etc.
So is it worth 60 bucks? If you love the theme as much as I do then yes. But otherwise it is a must for 30, definitely.
Have a good one! :)
That all sounds great, thanks, I’ll have to check it out. I keep seeing it on sale, too.
Good idea. It’s absolutely worth it on sale. There will be a dlc (or already is?) but I dont know about it so do as you please. ;)
A couple people have said there’s a significant core patch coming out in tandem with phantom liberty, so I’m going to look into that and see if it’s worth waiting a few months. I’m a patient gamer anyway
Whatever the patch is, theres not a lot to fix anymore imo. At least if you have a beefy computer. Everything else I can’t speak to.
Very cool, I’m excited to try it out. I’ll look into this patch they were talking but scout sales while I do it.
I started a new playthrough a few days ago, and I’ve been loving it. I will probably start another once the new dlc comes out. Is there anything I should try out before that?
You can finish the main quest to get a different ending. If you already done that, you can mess with your builds, read shards near the site of the side quests to learn more about cyberpunk lore and have fun with the side quests since gameplay will a bit different after phantom Liberty since they will be changing some gameplay mechanics.
Me personally I’ll play the main and sides slowly and go photomode most of the time.
This is making me want to start a new play through. Finished it once when the game first came out and haven’t touched it since.
Maybe I can go back and take my time this time trying all the different side quests 🤔
The patch sounds like a pretty big overhaul so I’m waiting for that before I start playing again. I just wish we had more than a week between the patch and the expansion.
mods will probably be temporarily nuked when the patch and expansion comes out. But I’m very eager to read the patch notes.
Nice Choom,
I bought this game, played it 3 hours on launch, failed to refund it. Give me 3 reasons to reinstall this on steam and try it again.
- The story
- The feeling of just walking through night city
- The Characters
The feeling of just walking through night city
Totallly this. Sometimes I just launch the game to walk or ride around
Did you play it shortly after it launched, or some time after? The game was very unstable and buggy for a while after it released, but it’s been largely improved since then. There’s still a few minor bugs that are kinda hard to fix (usually scripting issues with some quest lines that can be broken, but I think most of those have also been repaired), but otherwise it’s very solid now.
Also, are you playing on a current-gen system? PS4/XB1 are going to have really bad performance, even with the updates.
If you didn’t quit due to performance problems, why did you decide not to continue? Maybe I could shed some light on things you’re missing out on.
I played on PC only. I played it within a day of launch. It has been so long that I hardly recall. I believe it wasn’t the most smooth experience, but more so than that, I didn’t enjoy the gameplay. I didn’t feel like my bullets were making a connection. The world felt more contrived than I thought it would.
I also feel like perhaps I bit into the hype to the point that I hadn’t seen the forest for the trees. During my time playing, I realized I wasn’t that into the whole cyber punk concept to begin with. That’s my fault obviously. Shameful though that I didn’t set myself up for a successful refund.
Ahh, I gotcha. I’d definitely recommend giving it another shot if it’s been a while! Some of the early weapons you’ll find will have some pretty poor stats, but once you get past the main “intro” quest (without spoiling anything, it’s after V and Jackie part ways), you’ll unlock basically the full game at that point, with access to a lot more options for weaponry.
I also wasn’t a huge fan of the gunplay in this game, so I ended up going with a netrunner build, so most of my combat was done a lot slower and from safe distances. If you ever try rolling another character, I definitely recommend going that route, instead. Dump the majority of your points into netrunning and cyberware, and also spec into stealth, and you’re basically the world’s most dangerous computer virus, IRL. Drop a few points into some melee abilities and keep a katana or some throwing knives equipped, and you’ve got yourself a really fun “cyber ninja” character going at that point. I prefer this playstyle, personally, because it feels a bit more appropriate for the world you’re playing in, as it keeps you safe from a distance, but capable to defend yourself up close, without needing much in the way of firearms. While you can absolutely run-and-gun your way through it if you want, I feel like you miss out on a lot of what makes Cyberpunk so special that way.
That said, if you come across any “smart” weapons (instead of bullets, they fire homing projectiles that auto-track enemies), those definitely felt a lot more fun to use for me. The only gun I really keep equipped is Skippy (a smart pistol that’s tied to a really fun quest) because it’s great for those situations where you’re waiting for your skill skill cooldowns and need to drop an enemy or two and don’t feel like aiming.
Alternatively, you could also just “bypass” the combat by dropping the difficulty to just breeze through the story and the environments. Despite a lot of the game’s flaws, it has some of the best narrative I’ve seen in a game in ages, so the story is absolutely worth digesting, in my opinion. The game actually poses a lot of really interesting philosophical questions to the player (if you enjoy some of the themes in Black Mirror about technology, identity, and ethics, then you’ll probably dig Johnny’s quest line), and goes into some pretty dark places. I’m usually not the kind of person to be emotional with movies or games, but there were several moments in Cyberpunk that had me really invested in the well being of some characters and making choices not for myself, but for them.
But also, if it’s not for you, then it’s not for you. There’s a lot of parts of the game that I can see being an absolute turn-off for some people, and I get that. It can be gross, immature, and even unnecessarily disturbing at times. Sometimes the humor doesn’t land, and some characters just aren’t memorable or even likable. But, at the very least, the story is absolutely fantastic, and there’s very little I can criticize in that regard.
If you’re into anime at all, maybe also check out the Edgerunners show on Netflix. It’s fairly short, and focuses on its own completely separate story from V’s, in a slightly different point in time than the game takes place in, and with its own characters, so it’s not related much to the game’s story (and thus, won’t spoil anything about the game). But it does a pretty great job at capturing the feel of Night City and the characters in it, and uses a ton of songs from the game, too. I’m not a huge anime fan, so I couldn’t really say how it compares to other shows, but the artwork and action sequences are fantastic. Honestly, I feel like the anime is a better starting place if you want to get familiar with the world of Night City.
This is probably a lot more than you asked for, lol.
I’m not gonna convince you playing again if you really feel like it is not for you. Maybe someday you might feel like giving it a go again and play it, so hopefully you will enjoy it that time. So for now, thank you for supporting CDPR financially! 😅
P.S. I am not a CDPR employeeeeeeee