Hoverlegs?! I think I killed him and took his cane. And now I’m using my bootleg double jump legs like a chump.
I just hit the point of no return. I’m aware that when you finish the final quest it plonks you back to just before you started it, but I’m clearing a bunch of side quests first anyway.
I think the game deserves a second playthrough but I’ll likely wait until a) it’s been fully patched, b) I upgrade my machine, and c) some dlc comes out. So probably about a year.
How would you rate the game?
- With bugs?
- Ignoring the bugs?
Some thoughts about the game’s aesthetics. I really liked the way everything seemed like reasonable trends based on how things look today. None of the clothing was “hyper futuristic.” People still wear baseball caps and jackets. I also really dig the interiors of the vehicles - I bought a new car last year and it has a big ol’ touchpad in the middle console and lots of digital bits on the dashboard. I could definitely see more and more stuff being replaced with LEDs and digital readouts.
I think it’s clear that this game wasn’t finished when it was released. I don’t just mean the bugs, it looks like they weren’t done with the content. For example, there is a stealth perk that prevents enemies from hearing you in the water; anyone here spend any time in the water? I retrieved some loot out of the water, but stealth wasn’t an issue. I think at some point, management just said put a bow on it and call it done, but I bet this isn’t the game the developers intended.
Yeah, I have a bunch of items that extend the amount of time I can spend underwater but the only time you’re actually there for an extended period is a sidequest where you get a wetsuit. That was definitely a system they didn’t bother to flesh out.
There are some other remnants of things they never developed. I’m starting to appreciate Bethesda’s approach to the next Elder Scrolls game, it’ll be done when it’s done.
There’s one side mission where yous steal something from the a dock. I sneaked onto the dock by land but made my escape by jumping in the water and swimming to the beach. I also think some of the side missions weren’t really finished. I captured all seventeen cyberpsychos and expected to get some new cool mission after that but nothing. I was disappointed.
Yeah, I wonder if the first expansion packs will basically be finishing the game.
Had a very cyberpunk moment: I was on my way somewhere when I passed some gangsters assaulting an innocent shopkeeper. Well, we can’t have that, can we? Especially since gang members with criminal records have a price on their heads dead or alive, so you know how that went. Too late for the victim, though. But, upon collecting the evidence, it turned out that our innocent shopkeeper was a war criminal in hiding who had committed far worse atrocities than anything the poor goons sent to dispense Night City justice could have done.
So the game at least gets some atmospheric details right.
I think I ruined the game for myself. Since I was so bad at anything in the beginning except running in and slashing madly, I really went hog wild in building up reflexes and blades. So now I’m maxed out reflexes and have all the blade perks maxed out. I’m now swinging a machete
I found off a dead guy for 40-60,000 crit damage, instantly killing anything and everything. Gang members, cyberpsychos, the occasional cop or civilian by accident, all die instantly taking any challenge out of combat. No need for dodging, no need for hacking, no need for guns, no need for crafting, no need to buy weapons.
Of course, I haven’t gotten very far in the main quests as I’ve been spending most of my time doing side missions and clearing out “assaults in progress”. So a few questions, please be as spoiler free as possible.
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do the assaults in progress respawn? I’d hate to have spend so much time clearing icons off the map just to have them repopulate.
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can anything later on in the plot take 40-60k damage and still be a threat? Do the big bads level up with you?
Near as I can tell, map locations (Light blue icons or yellow quest markers) don’t respawn. But, if you pass through a cleared area, you might get random minor police actions (blue stars on the mini map) or just find a group of miscreants loitering around who are worth a bounty.
There’s a set of achievements for clearing out all “gigs and NCPD scanner hustles” (i.e., the light blue icons) in a given region. So yeah, pretty sure they never respawn.
I haven’t noticed any significant change in the baddies. Really, this is a common problem in open-world RPGs (more linear RPGs can dole out more precise amounts of XP, and can level the enemies based on that). The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series both made it easy to have an uber-powered character.
I guess my advice would be to give yourself more constraints. Stealth-only, non-lethal only, pistols only, etc. Or just accept that pure combat isn’t really the strong point of the game.
The game is pretty easy with high-level quickhacking, too. Not quite 60k damage, but the self-spreading quickhacks mean I can take down a half-dozen baddies in a handful of seconds. Still, there’s a bit of challenge in doing it completely undetected.
Thanks for the answers!
Next issue!
Does anyone know if there is a level cap? My street cred has been pegged at 50 for a while now which is making me think 50 might also be the level cap. I’m only at 36, but getting ever closer.
It’s 50.
I’m at around 135 hours into the game and still finding fairly lengthy story lines to get into. In fact, there’s a potential romantic partner option in the game who I haven’t even met yet, much less started the story with and those stories (based on the other three) tend to be fairly long multi-chapter affairs. There’s a lot of meat in this game, can’t complain about that.
What I will complain about is the awful, awful crafting system. It’s obviously half-baked and was never really tested well or completed. On the surface, it’s fine and if you only use it now and then, it’s no problem. If you decide to make crafting “a thing” (which is a legitimate choice seeing as how there’s a whole perk tree dedicated to it) you run into a number of issues. The worst offender is that there’s no bulk crafting for turning lesser components into advanced components. You’re actually expected to press and hold a button each time to turn 9,000 Common parts into 1,500 Uncommon parts. Then to convert those into 250 Rare parts. I wound up installing an autoclicker with a custom script so I could set the game to waste an hour converting all my Commons. I feel bad for console players where that’s not an option; you need to press-hold-release each time so taping down a button doesn’t work. Converting iconic items into Legendary tier takes a LOT of components.
There’s not a ton of high end recipes so I hope you like the look of the handful of options you get. Not an issue for weapons but maybe not everyone wants to wear a bright blue and pink motorcycle jacket – I’d think a benefit to crafting should be having better control over how you tailor your look. What’s worse, the result you get is semi-random. You might get a Legendary item with no mod slots, you might get one with a single mod slot and you might get one with four mod slots. That’s a huge power discrepancy and just encourages save scumming each time you craft since I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to press/hold their button 10,000 times and get a gimped item at the end.
So I finished the game. In fact, I finished it four times, saving before the point of no return, and got four very different endings.
The first was horrific, possibly the darkest ending I’ve seen in a game. The second was… quick. The third was melancholy; the fourth was bittersweet. All were excellent.
In the first, I went with Hamaka, and then decided to stay in my body at the end. In the second, I shot myself on the rooftop. In the third, I went with Rogue, and let Johnny have my body, and in the fourth, I went with the Aldecaldos, and kept my body at the end, riding off into the sunset with Panam. Of them all, I think the last was my favorite.
I have to respect the game for sticking with the genre’s noir roots and refusing to give the player a simple happy ending. All quibbles aside, I thought it was a very good game, and in time, it might become a great game. My friends have been asking me whether they should play it, and I say yes, absolutely - in another 4-6 months or so, when it’s finished. I’ll probably be playing it again then, too.
0k, so I’m now at like 44, I think, and I’m just now gaining levels in cold blood. What the heck is a stack of cold blood? How do I get them and how do I use them? And why am I just now leveling up in it? The only thing I can think of is that around lvl 40 I stopped using a machete and switched to a katana and all of a sudden I’m at lvl 7 cold blood.
Cold Blood comes from its own skill tree. Rank 1 gives you a stack of Cold Blood whenever you kill an enemy for a few seconds. Other perks give you more stacks, damage and speed bonuses while Cold Blood is running, makes it so you lose 1 stack at a time instead of all of them when the cool down runs out, etc.
You have to put 1 skill point into the Cold Blood tree to begin leveling it up.
You earn ranks in Cold Blood by building Cold Blood stacks, so you have to get the entry level perk before you start earning XP in it.