Cyberpunk 2077 [split from video games]

[IlyaP]

17 hours ago, karaddin said:

I never do reviews but I probably should given for this given how much I enjoyed it and how much hate there is, thanks for the prompt!

Thinking I might do the same, given how much I love this game (having now put 118 hours into it.)

[karaddin]

8 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

I was thinking of picking up now with this pretty good sale price. Worth it? My RPG experience has always been hit or miss. I bounced hard off any of the Witcher games, with games like Skyrim and Mass Effect being more style. I do like a good cyberpunk world if well developed.

If you're interested, below is what I wrote for my Steam review. I mostly focused on the emotional success of the game rather than the mechanics, but I broadly agree with what Ran said. I'll also say the vehicle handling is dogshit lol. That said the ease of the combat does let you play around with quite a few different approaches even within the same build, whether its sprinting in with katanas with time dilation and killing a group before they even know you're there, blazing away with a shotgun or picking people off from a distance can all be done with the same build.

Quote

Between its troubled launch and a social media marketing campaign which didn't seem pitched to me it took me quite a while to give CP2077 a chance, so I can only speak for the state the game is in now. While that state is far from bug free, most of what remains are relatively minor and didn't disrupt my play or enjoyment of the characters, the story and the fantastically realised setting of Night City.

Cyberpunk has an engaging story with excellent characters, but ultimately what I think is the bench mark of art is whether it makes me feel. And Cyberpunk made me feel so damn much, and with such intensity that this very much belongs among the company of games from the last decade which are finding the potential of the medium to produce true art.

The emotional intensity of the game belongs alongside much more narrow scoped, narrative games such as the Life is Strange series and matches/exceeds the peaks of what Mass Effect (one of my favourites) required multiple games worth of attachment to the characters to achieve. Not every character knocks it out of the park, but the relationship with most of the core characters absolutely does.

The soundtrack is phenomenal and extremely well matched to the subject matter it appears alongside, absolute 10/10 on this front. The visual appeal of Night City is also breath taking despite all the grime that hides out of sight, but is in your face in the close up - I'm not sure the narrative of the game would even work without managing to make it feel like a real thing that exists like another character.

Voice acting performances are also 10/10 (all games as female V, can't comment on male V) with Cherami Leigh and Carla Tassara standing alongside performances like Ashley Burch's raw performance as Chloe in LiS. Emily Woo Zeller, Rome Kanda, Jane Perry, Kari Wahlgren and others also turn in excellent and memorable performances. The big name is of course Keanu and its probably the most complicated I've felt about a character he's played in a while, managing to perfectly walk the line of his charisma creeping through my guard without ever obfuscating that he's a genuinely unpleasant asshole who does genuinely grow through the game. I've seen some who feel he's just playing a bland version of himself, but personally felt he managed to blend highly expressive yet emotionally numb in a way thats pretty much perfect for the character once you know what he's been through.

The one warning I'd give about this game is that its a dystopian setting with a lot of characters who are not in a good place psychologically, and the game unsurprisingly deals with plenty of tragedies and dark subject matter. Part of those feelings that I was talking about are intensely sad or painful, if you're not in a space to deal with these feelings in your leisure time I'd give this a pass until you are.

If this review sounds a little overly gushing, its because I am. I only picked this up a few weeks ago and its been living in my head pretty much 24x7 since then. My biggest complaint would simply be that I want more.

 

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

I'll also say the vehicle handling is dogshit lol.

This is why I stuck to Jackie's motorcycle for pretty much the entire game. The handling of those fucking cars, even with a few mods, still felt like I was driving on black ice with aged tires with zero friction. 

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

If this review sounds a little overly gushing, its because I am. I only picked this up a few weeks ago and its been living in my head pretty much 24x7 since then. My biggest complaint would simply be that I want more.

::chef's kiss::

Terrific review. Thank you for writing it. (I'm also trying to find your review in Steam so I can shamelessly "like" it.)

 

[karaddin]

2 hours ago, IlyaP said:

::chef's kiss::

Terrific review. Thank you for writing it. (I'm also trying to find your review in Steam so I can shamelessly "like" it.)

 

Thanks! There are a *lot* of reviews for the game on Steam haha, I'll be surprised if you manage!

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, karaddin said:

Thanks! There are a *lot* of reviews for the game on Steam haha, I'll be surprised if you manage!

If I wasn't using every last bit of my spare time to blast through the Mass Effect Legendary Edition trilogy, I'd probably go all hyper-dork and try and find it. Maybe after I get through ME: LE (which will probably take me into next year, given how massive the 3 games are how limited my free time is these days).

[karaddin]

My brain just broke reading a reddit thread about how "the bugs aren't why we hate it" with person after person claiming its not even a RPG. I can't decide if they've never played RPGs or they didn't actually play cyberpunk and are repeating the criticism that's pillar in the "meta".

It's loot, XP progression system, skill progression system, variety of play styles, level of character customization, and impact on the course of the story all exceed various other RPGs that I've played and loved which have never had their RPG credentials questioned. It's such an odd criticism.

[Ran]

The "not an RPG" thing is really weird to me, personally, but we saw it from pretty early on. People seem to have very narrow ideas of what an "RPG" entails.

[Jace, Extat]

I always understood RPGs to mean lots of selectable dialogue, different characters/factions to choose between supporting or opposing, and robust character customization regarding play style.

Loot is nothing to me except a bunch of stupid numbers with a color code attached.

[Kalbear]

I know there was a lot of  conversation about how they wanted a world where things were far more impacted than Cyberpunk gave - things like Fallout4 levels of changes or Mass Effect 3 kinds of 'save  this crew or have them die'. I still think that CP2077 delivers that in spades, though probably not quite so openly and loudly as Fallout does, but in a lot of ways better than that. 

It's definitely not perfect, and there are definitely ways in which it could be better, but you have quite a lot of impact.

[Werthead]

An RPG game is a game where you play a role and have some choice in the story (even if it's just a change in the order of which missions get played when). I'd also argue that whilst most RPGs have a strong combat focus, it's not the only focus, and there are extensive parts of the game where combat does not feature and where you can engage in exploration, dialogue and bartering. Customisation can be somewhat minimal or extremely extensive.

Cyberpunk 2077, Skyrim, Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic, The Witcher 3, Jade Empire, Anachronox, Planescape: Torment and Final Fantasy VII are all RPGs despite them having dramatically varying degrees of these factors.

The lines are getting blurrier with more open-world action games having progression and some customisation systems which appear to be aping RPGs, but these games usually do not have the ability to initiate dialogue or change mission outcomes. So GTA5, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Assassin's Creed: Valhalla are more RPG-ish than their forebears, but are not true RPGs. Although a game like Watch Dogs: Legion is starting to really get into the grey area inbetween.

[karaddin]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

 Cyberpunk 2077, Skyrim, Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic, The Witcher 3, Jade Empire, Anachronox, Planescape: Torment and Final Fantasy VII are all RPGs despite them having dramatically varying degrees of these factors.

Yeah that's a pretty similar list to what I was thinking of. You can move sliders up and down for how much emphasis each game puts on each component, but for each element there is a game that puts substantially less emphasis on that component than CP did.

I think the "meaningful choice" part is probably the most unfair criticism - they seem to think that just because you're not deciding the fate of an entire species it doesn't count, ignoring that this isn't a game about saving the world - just of saving (and probably failing) yourself.

And you still have a whole bunch of people who can be alive or dead based on your actions, and some of them are much more satisfying for the game not even prompting you to do it - such as saving Takemura. I will concede I wish there was a way to save Evelyn. I do think these unprompted options probably suffer from the early bugginess/unfinished, as you're less likely to explore options if you think it just feels unsatisfying because it's unfinished.

[Corvinus85]

Games these days seem to be hybrids of at least two genres if not 3 or 4. For example. Mount & Blade is a sandbox RPG first and foremost, but it also has so much strategy gameplay in it, that in Steam searches you can find it under the strategy category. 

[karaddin]

I feel like a lot of that impression comes from uncritically repeating what is being said by the clickbait hate videos on YT etc, and partially that a lot of these people are probably actually kids. I see them talking about the loot mechanics like "loot and shoot" invented the idea of collecting lots of loot with frequent upgrades while levelling, the uncommon/rare/epic/legendary tier system etc when loot and shoot is actually still a "new comer" to my old ass. The importance of loot comes much more heavily from Action RPGs and MMORPGs, both of which are either a subset of or adjacent to "proper" RPGs.

But I guess I'm turning into an old lady yelling at the kids to get off my garbage bag filled lawn.

[IlyaP]

21 hours ago, karaddin said:

It's loot, XP progression system, skill progression system, variety of play styles, level of character customization, and impact on the course of the story all exceed various other RPGs that I've played and loved which have never had their RPG credentials questioned. It's such an odd criticism.

Maybe their only experience with "rpgs" is Mass Effect 2. 

In which case, that makes a twisted kind of sense.

[Ran]

This is pretty cool -- discussing some of the challenges in telling stories in first person:

 

[karaddin]

I'll watch that later, but did they mention anything about the way the model of your weapon extending in front of yourself works funny with getting really close to someone in first person? On my last run doing the GIM I had my katana drawn while talking to the Netwatch gonk and realised if you stand too close to him it doesn't clip through him or disappear, so the scale of the katana makes his head look like it's a size of a whole body lol.

[Ran]

Cyberpunk 2077  was named Game of the Year by IGN Japan, which was nice. Shut out at the Game Awards, though.

[Werthead]

Choom choom, mofos, choom choom.

 

[Ran]

Read about that mod. Not quite perfect, but it's amazing that so many of the bones of the planned system are still in there that a fan could more-or-less complete it. I'm guessing one of the future DLCs will implement things properly, just because why not?