Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty

I'm not happy with what they did with Cyberpunk 2077. They added this game mode that I hate: scripted parts where I can't decide anything, just like a rat in a maze, I have to get to the goal without stops and time to think. The first super boss I encountered, the Chimera, had to be destroyed step by step according to a script. A gamer's nightmare.

I found as I played Phantom Liberty, my interest cooled. The expansion feels very Modern AAA: great production values, cool story, linear level design, quick time events, characters explaining how to resolve problems. The complaints about forced stealth and forced combat are correct. It's COOL forced combat and COOL forced stealth, but after you've played through a great sandbox, it's quite a surprise to get shoved onto rails, even if they are rails for an excited roller-coaster. It's not bad, I'm having fun, but it's not what I expected and it feels more like a... different game. It doesn't expand 2077 so much as give you a new adventure to play with V. Is it worth your money? Well, I was a bit disappointed, but I think if I knew what it was going into it, I would have minded less. Perhaps knowing this you'll mind it less too!

New cosmetic content is locked behind watching Twitch. This is not what we were promised before the launch of the game. I can put with all the other shortcomings, but this crosses the last line.

Back still in 1.6, I had a level 50 character with all of the skills maxed out to their respective level limits. To summarize: 20 Body, 20 Tech, 20 Cool, and 8 Intelligence. I could run around with my Tech Shotgun, my Light Machine Gun, my Baseball Bat, my endless Festive Grenades, and my Gorilla Fists, while throwing the occasional hack here and there. The combat was fast, and I could use whichever approach I wanted in order to clear out the game's challenges. However, with this update the first thing was ruined for me was the melee combat. You see, on the hardest difficulty, after hitting a foe they might stagger or fall down to the ground, which renders them simply immune to all sources of damage until they get back up on their feet. Therefore: when I tried to pummel through a mob: I ended up swinging my weapons for no effect, which in turn allows the other enemies to keep on damaging you. This naturally exists for the new "Finisher" mechanic, where you by the press of 'F' key can choose to instantly finish enemies. However, the problem is that you have to keep on pressing it randomly in hopes it triggers whenever it can. Thus, you cannot really be taking those side steps to the right as your finger must be hitting the letter 'F.' There is no way to bind "mouse 1" to act as this finisher key, while retaining your ability to attack with that button. Neither is there an option for automatic finishers on attack. The same problem exists with guns. A full blast of the Tech Shotgun and you have to let the enemy stand straight back up again before you can land the killing blow on them. What was fast combat is now something very slow. Moreover, with the revamped skill tree, you are forced to pick a single weapon type, because you will not have the perk points left to spare in order to get everything you would actually need.

I really liked the story and sidemissions, however gameplay changes are really bad: 1) Spongy enemies: with 20 invested in reflexes and in body with Tier 5 weapons it still takes about 5 minutes to fight bosses. And the worst part about it that those battles are just boring: you just running around the "boss" and shooting it to see how slowly you chip off health from health bar. 2) "Somewhat Damaged" mission: if you think it wasn't bad enough that there are spongy enemies then how about unkillable enemy with which you need to do stealth mission. And stealth is very bad here combined with the constant "You cannot save here" you are basically loosing lot of time replaying these frustrating episodes. Please CDPR do not do such things again: if I wanted to play stealth horror I would've played "Alien: Isolation". 3) The primary storyline is another heist. Like we already didn't do it at the beginning with Jackie or later in the game with Panam or at the end the Arisaka tower (with whoever you are going side with). So I've seen lot of people compare it to "Blood and Wine" for "Witcher 3" and in my opinion not even remote: B&W storyline was much longer and much better, it did build on the good things of the W3 and did not introduce bad stuff. Phantom Liberty introduces lot of annoyances and it is same stuff like you did in the game.