Bionic Dues is a great game, but hella hard. As a huge Roguelike fan, I play them all. There's some amazing titles out there that will always be classics, such as Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM), Tales of Maj'Eyal (ToME), Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, Nethack, etc... Bionic Dues definitely deserves a spot on that list. A sci-fi Roguelike, where you control various robots that you send out on missions into locations controlled by hostiles. You have various tasks, such as killing specific targets, clearing a zone, destroying a mainframe... all while making the best of your units. Preparing yourself to take on an army of vicious robots. Each drone is unique, with their own loadout and skillsets. They each play their own role, from weapon heavy destroyer to quick stealth scout. It's up to you to figure out how to make the most of them and overcome every encounter. The game's challenge is top tier though. Enemies are tough. And every mistake can snowball into disaster, so you have to be smart about every move you make.
Overall this game is a worthy addition to any survival game enthusiast's collection. It's a wonderful blend of survival game with the old school isometric RPG system (games like Avernum, and such). It's main drawbacks are simply some things like the dated controls and graphics (which aren't bad, just could use some improvement in places), and some of the quality of life issues (like how hard it can be to get some specific materials which rely too heavily on luck). The plot is okay. Not bad, though nothing to write home about. But as a whole, the game offers an enjoyable experience with some unique twists.
This is what old school RPG's are all about. A game with amazing depth, great mechanics, memorable characters, excellent writing, great combat, and lots of exploration and rewards. Yes, the graphics are dated, but beyond that, this game holds up better than most modern RPG's. It's about quality and substance, not flash and spectacle. Though, for the time it came out, it was actually one of the better looking RPG's on the market. Enjoy an epic story blending sci-fi and mysticism, wonderful twists and turns... all in a beautifully detailed world full of lore and secrets to uncover. If you're a fan of the old school RPG's, from the Gold Box D&D titles to the original Fallout and Baldur's Gate games... then you owe it to yourself to grab this absolute gem of a game.
Sadly Cyberpunk is NOTHING like what was promised. For ages we saw videos and interviews explaining all the amazing features that would be in the game. All the cool mechanics. All the new ideas that would make it stand out and unique. In the end, we got a bare bones open world shooter, that fails on almost every level. Character development is practically non-existent. There's stats and skills (which are mostly just passives) that can slightly improve your character in certain regards. However all the gameplay is still 100% reliant on PLAYER skill, not character skill. So if your FPS skills are good, you'll breeze through the game. You can have no stats or skills tied to using gun, grab a pistol and just slaughter your way with ease. The weapon system is poor. There's a variety of guns, which mostly all do the same thing, and have wildly randomized stats. So you might have two versions of the same pistol with one doing three times the damage as the other. So getting good gear is entirely luck based. And the horrific crafting system doesn't help with that. The gear you craft is just as random, so you might waste a lot of materials trying to make something that's not garbage. The AI is non-existent. In combat, enemies mostly either stand in the open shooting (when they don't ignore you completely) or duck behind cover and just sit there. No flanking, no tactics, just target dummies. NPC's on the street are bland and lifeless, and usually just sqaut in place if a shot goes off (and disappear if you turn your back). The vehicle AI is also just not there. Cars follow set paths on the road, they won't swerve or avoid obstacles, they'll just stop and sit there forever. They also disappear when you turn away. The "open world" is dead and lifeless. No minigames or distractions like every other open world. Just a thousand "go here, kill/stealth guards, take/hack X" missions, repeated endlessly. Basically none of what was promised was delivered. Don't waste your money.
