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.
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.
Really enjoyed it, only recently finished a run with expansion and some QOL mods. Excellent visuals (with RTX), and if your into the theme the story was fun and pretty good. Not perfect by any stretch but solid. Gameplay mechanics is fairly engaging after the 2.0 patch.
It is definitely sad it took so long to get to here though, it was broken on launch beyond bugs - the builds you could do pre 1.5 were plain broken.
That said, we should celebrate anyone making single player games these days seriously, it feels like they are getting very thin on the ground.
I played it at launch. Even through all the bugs and half finished systems, it felt like somebody actually cared about the game. The story, characters and city were and still are amazing. Bit of an unpopular opinion, but it was always a pretty good game, at the very least an uncut diamond.
My theory with a lot of these games that “released badly and then come back” is everyone who disliked the game stopped playing and everyone who liked it kept playing so the crowd playing years later had a positive opinion of it through self selection more than anything the devs did.
I personally liked both Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man’s Sky on release, and while they are better now, I don’t see the night-and-day difference the internet would make you think happened.
NMS was quite literally a different looking and feeling game with maybe 5% (yes, twenty times less) of the current content and gameplay loops. Everything changed from how long it takes to gather basic resources to what order you get them in, the tutorial was streamlined and the way it picks the planet you start on was changed. There’s an unbelievable amount of things to do, to the point that expeditions started existing to give players a more guided experience with fresh regular content. It’s truly a far cry from where it launched, even space stations (the most static structures found in most star systems) have been overhauled and the old ones are only around as easter eggs now.
CP2077 integrated a ton of content and features from the most popular mods it had after the Anime update (particularly Vehicle Combat, from which it even took improvements to the way police spawn and act in addition to, yknow, the vehicular combat). Only a few of the core systems changed, mainly quickhacking and the way cybernetic implants are handled (also almost straight up taken from a mod). They did a balance pass on guns and made some of the weapon type features a bit different. If you didn’t push too terribly far through the game on release, none of it would seem different really. The locations and behavior of weapons and enemies in general gameplay didn’t change much, but access to mobility via implants was made easier (as the separated stores for them were largely equalized and merged) so it’s easier for fresh players and people not using guides to finish their “build”. Not quite the huge makeover NMS received, but it’s definitely different in terms of progression.
While you’re probably right to some extent about naysayers decreasing naturally over time, both games now have suspicious steamcharts numbers for being single player experiences. They get an influx of new players regularly in ways other similar titles don’t, and it’s almost certainly due to the changes in opinion of people who were playing them around their major updates, journalist articles or enthused friends.
TL;DR: No man’s sky really did change that much. CP2077 didn’t go as far but they’ve clearly made end user-oriented changes that are uncharacteristic for single player experiences.
Uncut diamond is a good way to put it.
The scenario, world building, graphics, and acting are world-class. Combat was decent. Most side-quests were forgettable and clearly worse than the main quest. The open-world was mechanically massively underwhelming, especially considering TW3 came out five years earlier.
This game received a lot of love and took a long time to make, but failed to achieve in some key areas. CDPR didn’t have the means to do what R* or Larian could, and that’s fine. I can’t help but feel that if these developers had put the same time and energy into a (semi) closed world à la Mass Effect or Deus Ex, not having to spend so much time filling in a huge open world map would have allowed them to make the whole game as tight and polished as the main quest stuff, and this could have been the best game of the decade or close to it. Only downside is it doesn’t tick the mandatory “Open World” box for AAA games, but does anyone actually care if the RPG elements are good? Mass Effects fans would surely disagree.
I quite liked it from the beginning. I played through all of it on PC with the unpatched release version. It was not nearly as buggy as people made it out to be. The story was pretty engaging and made up for a lot of the game‘s flaws.
Similar thoughts here. I was playing it on fairly high end pc as well from day 1 (wasn’t really patient with it… yea…) - Sure there were some funky glitches (eg. occasionally T-posing nude on bikes) here and there, but nothing game breaking. But that’s not to say those things didn’t happen to others, but I’ve understood the game was an absolute shitshow on ps4.
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”)
I’m a HUGE cyberpunk fan, so I made the mistake of buying it at release. Some of my most impressive issues:
- Trees would draw “on top” or in front of everything else, even when blocked by other objects. So in greener areas, my entire screen was filled with trees.
- The scripted driving sequences would get me stuck in “driving mode” about half the time after the scripted sequence is over. So I’d be walking around like a car, not able to strafe or jump.
So, I refunded it, outside of the refund period, but they were nice to me.
When the expansion released, and everything seemed a LOT better, I bought the game again, and I loved it! It’s a pretty OK game, with a great story and absolutely amazing sidequests.
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’s pretty good. I don’t think it’s $30 good. But it’s pretty good, I would put it in the class of interactive fiction, an in-depth visual novel.
As far as role-playing goes, it’s good for LARPing, but you don’t really get to craft your own story. There’s lots of rails, there are narrative branches but they all come back to the same place.
Kind of like a very well done Bethesda narrative environment, some okay storylines, some amazing storylines. It’s all on rails, you can do it in different orders. It’s a good immersion game.
Love it to pieces. Paid absolutely no attention to it before it was released, and due to some friendly advice from an online mate, waited a few months before picking it up, when most of the really bad bugs were already ironed out.
I love pretty much everything about it:
- The score. The music is just so fantastic.
- The settings. Brilliant. Any RPG that isn’t set in a plain vanilla fantasy world already has a big advantage when it comes to my affection, but this setting is just super cool.
- The representation. Absolutely not in-your-face, yet so much there.
- The world building. I think they paid absolutely absurd attention to details, like “where does everyone’s food come from” and “where does everybody’s garbage go”.
- The story. I like it.
- The characters. They feel relatable and their motivation makes sense, which is not always the case in many games. I find myself caring about (some of) them.
- The quests. I like them.
- The combat. It started out okay, but now, it is so much fun. I absolutely love what they have done with it after 2.0. I love being able to actually throw people at each others. I love the various melee finishers. I love the cyberware. I love using the wrist rocket launcher to blow up attacking cars. I love being able to throw knifes and axes without constly having to craft more. I love all of it.
- The mods. I love what dedicated modders have done to make a good game into a really really great game. There are such fantastic mods for this game, it keeps bogging my mind.
So yeah, love it to pieces, and absolutely one of my all time favorite games.
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.
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).
I’ve played through the normal game and the expansion. I loved the universe, but the gameplay isn’t so great to be honest.
Also I often struggled with dialogues, selecting one sentence and not understanding why I’d have to kill everyone around after making this choice (Maman Brigitte for instance). But this might be just me😇
I recommend playing these games and I’ll play both at least twice.
mild spoilers ahead
It did seem strange how poorly things end with the voodoo boys. You can get out without a fight, but you can’t make any friends. It seems to me like asides from kinda betraying you, they’d make for pretty natural allies against netsec and Arasaka.
So no, I don’t think that was just you.
not understanding why I’d have to kill everyone around after making this choice (Maman Brigitte for instance)
That actually happened to me, too. Luckily, I didn’t mind too much, but yeah, it was a bit of a surprise.
The gameplay suck. The story starts off ok, but becomes lame. Pretty graphics. Still plenty if glitches. Walking around the city is worth like $10, not worth the $30 I paid.
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.
