Are you using the same computer as back then? The game’s system requirements went up with the 2.0 patch release.
I sure am. I’ve updated the drivers of course. The game isn’t unplayable at least.
You may have dropped below the recommended requirements on one or more categories. The game also requires an SSD now, so if you’re not using one that could be causing issues too.
The game is running pretty smoothly for me.
Sometimes textures take a bit to load but that has always been the case, and it never causes a problem. It just looks weird for a couple of seconds,
I first tried this game over a year ago and I gave up after about 10 hours.
Now I’m hopelessly addicted. I’m 34 hours in to a new play and I just started diving into Phantom Liberty proper. I’m not sure what changed but the world definitely feels more alive than it did before.
Biggest knock against this game is that the first act (basically everything up to the first “interlude”) is a slog. I’m playing a tech-hacker build right now and part of me wants to already start over with a melee build after I finish, but I don’t know if I want to play that prologue again. I wish I had kept a save right after it to start over there.
I thought the main plot was good, but some of the epilogues were great – the Arasaka surgery ending and the Johnny takes over V’s body ending were very thought provoking, in particular.
If you start a new game you can choose to skip immediately to the Phantom Liberty part. Then you don’t have to do it again.
I enjoyed sidequests and any time Keanu Reeves showed up. I dunno, nothing super impactful stood out about the story for me. I helped those desert people and teamed up with them in the end.
Skyrim’s main story isn’t its most powerful part, either. I played it again about three years ago and had forgotten the last 30% of its story almost entirely.
That’s how I finished the game the first time around too, even though my character was a street kid, Panam had turned him “native”. I thought it was a wonderful ending and when 2.0/Phantom Liberty came out, I started over again because I wanted that playthrough to stay with that ending.
To get an immersive game, you cannot just do a speedrun. All the sidequests and gigs, sure, but you also have to listen to conversations, and read every shard (which will explain the backstory of that body you found in the trunk of the car in the desert, or of the young couple caught up in a gang rivalry, etc etc)
All the epilogues are essentially “cyberpunk”, but in my mind there is only one truly proper way forward for V, and it does not involve any desert people. You will need guns. Lots of guns. Supposedly, to enable this ending, you need to embrace Johnny’s philosophy (not all his fucked up history of course)
Awesome. Now I have something to look forward to after Spider-man 2 and Mario Wonder. (Man, what a good year for games).
It’s a pretty good ending, but probably my least favourite in terms of feeling like a generic happy(ish) ending.
Honestly the second ending you mention brings to mind arguments I’ve had with other players of the game. That for me, a major weakness of the main storyline is that you’re playing Johnny’s story to completion, NOT V’s. Admittedly, it’s because of how V and Johnny’s forced sharing is the one thing in Johnny’s entire self-centered life that forces him to have empathy, but still, it’s Johnny’s story.
Eh, I still enjoy the game (I waited until 1 year in and most of the major fixes were out), have all the endings completed including the two special ones, but dammit, I want more for V than just a few moments of the epilogue. And no, I don’t have Phantom Liberty yet, waiting for a sale.
It’s not unprecedented though. The original Star Wars trilogy was bringing Vader’s story to completion. I actually like it when the ultimate protagonist in a story is someone you didn’t expect.
(Of course, when it’s a game and your character isn’t the protagonist, I get the dissatisfaction. This isn’t a traditional story format.)
I’ve very glad you put in the second section. 
We are in agreement.
Note that you are asked to customize V — gender, appearance, etc. Also, the developers deliberately chose the first-person perspective to provide a “greater sense of immersion”.
You also select a background for V (Corpo, Street Kid, …) Which maybe implies some kind of back-story but it is all kept pretty nebulous. So the game could not be about V’s story, because they did not write one; they wanted the player to imagine whatever he or she wants to imagine.
You can embrace or reject the cyberpunk life or the things that mattered to Jackie and Johnny, but that is reflected mostly in how you end up picturing your V and not in the actual gameplay.
You don’t even get V’s real name until you do the mission in Clouds, where they call you Victor or Valerie, and you reply, “I just go by V.” And I don’t think it’s ever referenced again. There is also no last name or mention of any kind of family aside from V’s semi-adopted family with Jackie and his mom.
I figure it is a Thomas Pynchon reference (and another instance of keeping things vague, as you point out).
Not that happy considering it is all but certain V is going to die in a few months (Panam says something about “contacts”, but in context only corpo/nation-state level players have the resources to cure you (Arasaka, NUSA, Mr. B), and what are the odds the Aldecados have access to people like that, and, even if they did, what are you going to have to/be able to do for them in order to get them to help you? (It won’t involve sitting in the desert soaking up good vibes and smuggling a few crates now and then, that’s for sure. So your “escape” was illusory?)
It is all left unanswered and open-ended, of course.
So @DPRK, a metric ton of other CRPG’s let you customize your appearance, class/skills, etc. Yet almost all of them are still about the character you create, although they may have story driven main motives.
I’m saying that CP2077 made a deliberate choice to make their main story all about Johnny, with you at most driving the car taking Johnny from place to place. Again, I like the game, but the nature of it’s main story makes it the least immersive for me. To be honest, you get two main choices in the game: Your lover (which despite customization is gated by certain body/voice choices) and which ending you chose. Which in one sense is why I liked pre-emptive bad ending. Because you basically say “F---- this” to Johnny, Arasaka, and everyone.
As for the lifepath, OMFG, don’t bring that up, for all the effect it has on the actual story they might as well not have bothered and just left it ALL up to the player’s imagination, especially as it was heavily implied during development that it would be a substantial issue. It’s one of my boiling point failures when it comes to the game. What a complete and utter cockup.