Tag: Cyberpunk 2077

Before getting to Point of No Return, I need to finish Phantom Liberty DLC. It replaces Johnny with an Asian chick, Songbird.

The story is that you need to save one girlboss, the President, whose plane was shot down, while getting instructions from another girlboss.

Because it’s an end-game content, and the character is maxed out most likely, they introduce a new perk tree, that can only be upgraded through perks you find in the new zone, Dogtown. A lot of the new perks are focused around buffing the cybernetic weapons you can install in your arms, as they are indeed pointless. Whole point of them could be that they are concealed, but then you are rarely penalized even for carrying an antitank rifle in public.
The way they recreated the fight with a robot tank from Ghost in the Shell is great. It’s a good boss all in all, that has weak points and multiple phases, but you also can just whack it little by little.

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One sidequest that annoyed me was when a husband asks you to assassinate the killer of his wife who’s getting released early. Only the husband gets killed in the assassination attempt instead. Turns out the killer is participating in a reality show since he Found God. What annoyed me is not the theme or the characters, but the fact that the only way to progress is to follow the crew around. I’d rather shoot Joshua and just complete the contract, because that’s who my V is. I remember Witcher to be more nuanced, but maybe it’s just me.
I’m pretty sure the sex scene in the tank is a direct reference to Hardwired, the first cyberpunk I red without knowing what cyberpunk is.
Judy says that after I kicked Maiko, the Tiger Claws gang trashed the brothel, so she’s leaving town.
The serial killer quest is nice. And by that I mean unsettling, all the visions of cows with gas masks.
One thing that disappoints me slightly is weapon variety. On the surface, there are lots of weapons: regular firearms, smart autoaiming ones and tech that can be charged and shoot through walls. But enemies mostly drop the regular ones, and I have seen only one kind of LMG the entire game. Would be nice to have a smart LMG like in Aliens, I kind of expected that.
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Got my first Sandevistan from a inconspicuous sidequest regarding capturing a snuff movie director titled Monster Hunter. It’s a legendary cyberware featured heavily in the Edgerunners anime, and basically the best slomo in the game. There’s also a quest referencing Edgerunners, that awards you… a jacket.
Since meeting with Hanako is
From Panam’s quest line got a unique silenced sniper rifle. It’s a big deal, as usually you can’t put silencers on them.
Most of the quests are entertaining, but quite linear. Taking over Clouds brothel is as bit more nuanced. It’s run by Tiger Claws gang, and you sneak into mansion of its owner while two more of the gang leaders are present. Maiko, one of the prostitutes, has change of plan, and proposes to replace the leader with her. I don’t like change of plans, so Maiko went down. Killing her for good makes good-hearted Judy very upset, but I was lucky I kept a non-lethan revolver from my “replicant” hunt.
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Since I mostly focus on sniper rifles, Oda boss fight gave me a lot of trouble. Two things surprisingly helped, though: you can double jump above most of the attacks, and the double barrelled rifle I’ve got from Panam’s questline had a damage-over-time, so I could see where he’s hiding to regenerate, since he was still losing HP.
You get your revenge on Woodman for Evi pretty quickly. No dialog or anything, just a shot on the parking lot.

Fist fight questline is common: Witcher 3 had it, Kingdom Come had, probably other games I’ve forgot. But that is the first time I received a howitzer for my troubles 😅

Found Skippy Smart Pistol, which is a fun reference to Microsoft Office assistant, but as far as Smart Weapons go in Cyberpunk, they don’t kill enemies fast enough. It does give you a choice of targeting limbs or the head, and I hoped it will help me with capturing cyberpsychos, but it just shoots them in the limbs until dead 😬

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The rogue limousines quests line is also fun. Here’s the thing. The goal can stay always the same: return a rogue AI car to the fold. But the story is always different. One bitches about how Father AI doesn’t love it. Another sets an ambush for you. Third engages in good old ramming. And they all have different personalities.
One aspect that the game doesn’t explain well, is that you can have either “spells” or slowmo, but not both. Or more precisely, controlled slomo, because there are also implants that trigger it at the start of combat or when your health drops dangerously low.
Once you get a sniper rifle, most of the encounters become much easier. You can also get a smart sniper rifle, and yes, it can headshot for you. The only downside is that it’s a single shot. Or even better, you can get a tech sniper rifle that shoots through walls.
Ev offs herself in a bathtub. As Johnie says, so much for saving her.
Cyberpsychos questline continues to deliver. So far there was a ninja revenge story from the 70s, a prepper that overdid it and blew his family with a misplaced mine, and a guy trapped in an exoskeleton against his will.
Out of the implants, the double jump really stands out, as you can get over most fences easily, or on a roof to get a respite from enemy fire.
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Curious that the story repeats “Gladiator”: no-good son kills his Emperor father in a fit of rage, then puts the blame on the protagonist.

“Magic” is surprisingly effective, considering I’m not running a hacking build. As you don’t get slomo right away, bringing up magic menu is a good alternative to assess the situation, and you don’t need to aim precisely for the “spell” to hit.
Since it’s an ARPG, not a shooter, head shots aren’t guaranteed kill. But I did try to boost them with perks as much as possible.
As you try to locate Evelyn, there are morbid detail that’s easy to miss: the prostitute you were talking to earlier was taken to be disposed there too. Another reason not to spare anyone in the Power Plant.
Maybe I went to haitians too early, but in the Mall I managed to barely scratch the Sasquach miniboss. Luckily it’s possible to sneak past her, and then to make a deal with the agent, as I didn’t find a reason to kill him.
Annoying haitian hackers all get fried, and I dealt with Placide myself.
My favorite line of sidequests is catching cyberpsychos, a major theme in the Edgerunners series. Each has a little narrative, my favorite so far is “Smoke on the Water”, which is basically “Taken”, but with no happy ending. You’re supposed to only incapacitate them, which can prove difficult, and only later I joticed that rhe turret psycho did diez despite me finishing him off with fists. But it was too late to reload and the quest chain didn’t fail outright.
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There’s such a thing as “presence” in some games. Earlier Far Cry games had it, and Metro trilogy, and newer Resident Evil games. Cyberpunk has it too. It’s in the small details: how NPCs look at you, how your character places a hand over his eyes to shield them from a bright light, or puts one leg on the other when he sits.
Storywise, it’s also very convincing. You spend a few hours of real time doing jobs with Jackie before he’s killed. Compare that to Far Cry 6, where your “childhood friends” are killed 5 minutes in, and as a player you have absolutely no connection to them.
Or how V is not the chosen: when the jobs goes south, Jackie plugs the chip into his brain, and only because he was carrying the case, and just before his death you transfer the data to your brain.
The role system is interesting: you have attributes and perks, which you level as you gain experience, but you also have passive skills, that level up as you use them.
Weapons are strangely abundant. I’m used to not being able to pick anything but trash from dead enemies, but here, while sometimes they are broken, I assembled an entire arsenal just a few hours in.

Even five years in, the game is far from perfect. It crashed on me once already, and I’ve only been playing it for 2 hours.
At one point, I got a side mission to “rescue Brick”, although I’m not sure who’s that, which I failed, because I couldn’t find where should I rescue him from. When I reloaded, I didn’t get that mission anymore.
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