For the time, and compared to Fallout 3, it was definitely an improvement. It was…adequate, as a shooter, but Bethesda gets some props for having passable FPS gameplay in a very RPG-ish world with a boatload of “stuff” in it. And IMO great world design overall. The combat, etc. of course was no where close to contemporary FPS games, and it can’t hold a candle to Cyberpunk’s either.
Timex
5041
Oh yeah, fallout 4 was an improvement over prior fallout titles, no question.
But Cyberpunk is dramatically better than any fallout game. Cyberpunk actually feels like a real shooter.
It has been weeks but every time I start Cyberpunk I’m amazed at how gorgeous it is. It’s a high bar graphically.
And the side quests and gigs are pretty great if you take time to listen and look. Lots of backstory. A lot of stuff (even police blue quests) seem interwoven - one of the blue quests had more backstory on a side quest assassination I did.
My only real complaints are that so many systems feel half baked. Entire game systems like Crafting are clearly a first iteration and needed time in the oven. The lack of difficulty is also particularly egregious. I am not good at FPS games and this game is laughably easy on the hardest difficulty past the early game. There is no way I can tune it to be a challenge without tying a hand behind my back.
That kind of stuff. Big things that shouldn’t have slipped through the cracks, which were apparently more like chasms and less like cracks. These bother me more than the minor bugs I’ve personally encountered resulting in a handful of reloads.
Despite all that I think it’s a good game. It might even become a great one after a couple DLC and some patches, which I’m confident they’ll do. Fingers crossed.
Yes, balance is whackadoodle. In a single person game, I’m pretty ok with wonky balance, though, so it isn’t a deal breaker by any means, but it is wildly uneven. As @stusser and others have noted, mass quickhacking is flat-out broken. I finally have a character with the Intel-tree skills and legendary quickhacks to start exploiting the hack through walls stuff, and it is freakin’ hilarious. Broken, but hilarious. Entire corpo facilties, bristling with turrets, mechs, and elite troopers fall to my 98-pound weakling hiding behind a dumpster.
I mean, you would think that, as you can get mods that mitigate quickhacks, the bad guys would have them too. Or that the corps, which presumably understand high tech gadgetry, would be prepared for netrunner attacks. But no; any rando off the street with a second-hand deck and some dodgy softs can take down the biggest and the baddest. Hell, why did Silverhand even need a nuke?
The bit with damage being sometimes lethal, sometimes not, but there being little distinction between the two except in very specific and limited cases smacks of over streamlining too. It’s like they had this idea for making killing vs. incapacitating a big deal throughout the game, but ran out of time, so they left half of the system in but didn’t give you any reason for non-lethal outside of a few missions where you still get partial credit anyhow. The most bizarre result though is making you go around after every battle and administer the coup de grace to all the unconscious thugs. It’s rather brutal.
TurinTur
5045
The comparison with Fallout 4 is interesting. Both sold a ton because the great success of the previous game of the company, but both ended up being lesser games than that previous game by critics and public, both improved the action feel but the RPG side was somewhat streamlined.
This is not to say I consider both games equivalent. Let’s see, I’d say Fallout 4 was more polished at release, and no mechanical part of that game is as broken as CP’s hacking. But still, Cyberpunk world is better, as the highlights of the story, quests and characters (not that difficult, I barely remember anything from Fallout 4 as ‘good’ in those areas), the gunplay is better, as the higher degree of freedom in how to move around, and better stealth too.
Better or worse than Dragon Age Origins?
lordkosc
5047
In my 15 hour game, just starting act 2, I think my life path has offered a total of 3 unique responses to mission conversations.
TurinTur
5048
A thought.
Despite all the Judy simps, it seems to me Panam is more the canon romance. I say this just because she has more on-screen time, there are more missions with her. Apart from having a role to play in one of the endings.
TimJames
5049
The spoiler thread seems like a great place for your thoughts!
FWIW, I played and enjoyed Fallout 3, a few times, but played a lot more Fallout 4, many times over, because the gameworld was more polished (mechanically/artistically) and the gameplay was far more fluid (shooty bits).
Timex
5051
At later stages, you in fact do run into enemies who are hardened against hacking.
Specifically, what you run into most commonly are enemies that are immune to some of the ultimate hacks (like cyberpsychosis, suicide, system reset), and who block breech protocol.
When you can’t use breech protocol, it dramatically weakens a hacking heavy build. There are also enemies who have something going on, where it costs twice as much to hack them… I’m not sure exactly what’s doing that though.
I’m right there with you.
Plus you can turn Fallout 4 into a quasi-STALKER experience by increasing the difficulty, turning on survival, and just go wandering the wasteland.
Playing 2077 is increasingly making me want to go back and play Fallout 4 again which is a far better game in most respects and fully baked/developed at release. Or a Deus Ex.
antlers
5053
Thanks for this writeup; only just starting act 2 but I agree with what you say here. I must say I never thought I would like a shooter game but the shooting gameplay in Cyberpunk keeps drawing me back.
rei
5054
web-based breach minigame solver for those that suck at it like me:
https://breachprotocol.io/
Timex
5055
Deus Ex was cool, but ultimately was hurt by the fact that it felt so on-rails…
Fallout 4? Fully baked and developed at release? I feel like perhaps you are forgetting the state of Fallout 4 when it first came out…
Just like the central story path in 2077.
Well, I guess we are getting into how everyone has different experiences with bugs in games. Sure Fallout 4 had it’s share of bugs, but nothing that impacted my experience too severely unlike Cyberpunk 2077 which has been one of the worst bug-fests I have ever experienced outside of Brink.
Also Fallout 4 was never pulled from Sony’s online store, had multiple retailers grant blanket return policies, or had Microsoft put a warning about performance on the Xbox store pages. So at the very least Fallout 4 was more fully baked and developed than 2077 on release. That is an objective truth! :-P
Well, I agree with your statement that people have different experiences. I’ve had no significant bugs in my 114 hours of Cyberpunk so far. I do need to restart the game every two hours, or the FPS drops, and I’ve had three crashes. I am playing on a fairly good PC (3070, 10700k).
Again, experiences differ, but this is my GOTY by a large margin.
Kolbex
5058
The vast majority of the Cyberpunk bugs I have seen in videos just seem hilarious. Performance issues are another thing entirely, of course.
This is more about your tolerance of bugs, glitches, and issues than the fact that they don’t exist.
