This could be an amazing game. But Remedy thought it would be a great idea not to let you manually save your progress in different slots. Actually you can't save at all, the game does it for you. Here's the thing: I had a crash after five hours of gameplay. After that I reloaded, continued, and the progress of the last two hours was just gone. Two missions were reset. All upgrades up to that point gone. That is a no go. This would not have happened with a manual save system. On my first playthrough a few years ago I did not encounter crashes. Now I did. One crash was all it took. I'm done with this kind of developer arrogance. No more.
Politically uncorrect, lewd, and genuinely funny! Larry is still Larry, the loveable looser we all remember! The puzzles are pretty good, sometimes moon logic takes over, but it's not unsolvable. And in hard cases there are still walkthroughs. The finale reminded me of games like Colonel's Bequest while I must admit the maze (obligatory in old adventures) part they could have given the option to just skip that. The voice acting is great (especially Larry and Pi) in the English version, and the music swings along beautifully. All in all a good successor to the old games and Wet Dreams Don't Dry. You like Larry, sex jokes and adventure games?
Dungeon Siege 1 Simply amazing. It feels at times more like a strategy game, since you can control 8 characters. What follows are the most satisfying battles I ever had the joy of playing. You can modify the behaviour of your characters that they stay defensive, or kill everything in sight. You can pause the game at any time and give commands, for all at once or for each character individually. Combined with the pretty good loot and magic system and a strictly linear world map without the need to backtrack this game is special to me, one of the best hack and slash RPGs I've ever played! Which sadly leads me to Dungeon Siege 2 A mess. It only let's you have 6 characters, many keyboard short cuts are gone, the behaviour is not customizable any more. The graphics look better though. Still, I dropped it after a few hours because it got boring. Dungeon Siege 3 I didn't even bother after reading you control at max 2 characters. What made Dungeon Siege 1 so extremely satisfying was your party size and the world map that only knew one way: forward! Give 2 and 3 a go if you like, but don't expect the same experience like in 1 - one of the best action RPGs ever!
Gameplay is great, you have to conserve ammo, health is scarce, and enemies are scary. What made me dislike the game was the ending. Nora, the main protagonist, behaves like an idiot at the end. What happened in this parallel world becomes clear pretty fast if you read through the letters you find on your way, additionally there are many clues in form of maps and newsletter articles. Instead of understanding this she behaves like a little heartbroken princess in the end which does not fit her character who is running around guns blazing all the time at all. I guess the devs intended to make me feel sad in the end, and I did, just not for the reason they intended.
I have now finished this game for the second time, with Phantom Liberty installed. It's just breathtaking. Sometimes I just wandered through the streets, slow, looking around, taking in the sights and sounds of Night City. Especially the sound design in these moments is amazing, a mishmash of languages from all sides, music from radios and shops, honking cars, announcements from speakers at the crossings, the wind whistling through the streets. And that brings me to the next thing: I am amazed how well this game runs now. Ok, I have a high end CPU, but my graphics card is "only" a plain RTX4070. Even with 4k graphics and Raytracing I have around 60 fps. Well done CDPR! It's an experience I will never forget, and it gave me back the sense of wonder. I forgot how great a Triple A game can be if the devs put their heart and soul into it. I will replay this game in a year, or maybe two. And I'm looking forward to it! I can understand V has no intention of leaving this amazing nightmare of a city.
New city area, around 30 hours or more of playtime (I took my time, got around 50 hours out of it), great quests/stories, this is how an Addon has to be made! Not the 1-3 hours story playtime DLC plus three weapon skins that other companies sell for 15 Euros. It fits nicely into the main plot, even though you kind of know how it ends if you have played the main game once before (though I remember reading there is a way to actually end the whole game with the final mission of Phantom Liberty depending on the choices you made). But still there are enough twists and turns to keep you on your toes. Cyberpunk has evolved from a shabby start to one of my favourite games of all time! I rarely play a game more than once, but for Night City I gladly made an exception.
Even after reassigning the keys the controls are just bad. On the first screen I tried to climb a ladder which became almost impossible because of the angle Batman tries to climb up. I fell a lot. If you have a controller maybe it's all right, but with Mouse and Keyboard it's a nightmare. Dropped.
