Instead of shooting some nazis, what we do instead as BJ in this game during the first 15 minutes, is learning that his father was an abusive white man who forced him to kill a dog... There are tons of good shooter games, and this is definitely not it. Even TNO was silly, with out of place narrative and ridiculous attempts at a story, which derailed players from the actual fun which was shooting nazis. This one takes the same exact formula and cranks it up to eleven. Don't bother unless you really enjoy toilet humor and woke agendas.
I really, really don't get why this game has such high ratings. It does dome things really well, but it ultimately it utterly fails at its promise of "play and rule as evil with consequences." The game starts promising, and really, its first chapter is without a doubt the best one, but it all goes downhill from there. Tyranny gives you a promise of building a new world order in great evil overlord Kyros' name, but you don't actually do that. What you do is you do a bunch of fetch quests, and solve bickering between two generals of Kyros, who both behave like total morons - one mass-enslists defeated, bitter enemies, so that they can betray him, and the second one straight up executes them and then complains that his army doesn't have enough soldiers. Then, they both argue instead of fighting. There are moments where you can completely indulge yourself as an evil mastermind, yes, but I would expect a game with its main promise of "playing evil" to have more of them. Also, would expect much more opportunities at playing real evil instead of just "kill or don't kill". The game is full of illusionary choices - it straight up tells you that choices "matter". Well, that is a lie - yes, they matter to the point of what allies you are going to have, but ultimately, no game does really give you a choice where to steer the story. This one certainly doesn't, as you are ultimately a servant of someone else. For example, you can kill or spare a prominent political figure, but sparing her only results in her committing suicide. The game is also very rushed past the first chapter, and it shows. Short, with tons of filler combat. Boring for most of the 2nd half. Really unsatisfactory and abrupt ending. If you want a game where you can role play as an evil tyrant, play Pathfinder: Kingmaker as an evil character. That playthrough will do a thousand times better job than this game.
I think that the 4+ star ratings come from people who have never played past the first act of the game. This game feels totally like a chore. Somebody here wrote that the design is like a checklist of features - cliche NPCs - check; boring, cliche story about a big bad - check; re-invented D&D system for the sole purpose of not having to get a D&D license - check; uninspired and unbalanced classes/spells/abilities - check; tons of boring trash fights - check. I tried many times to finish and like this game, even purchased the expansions in the wain hope of finding something there, but it's so incredibly boring that I haven't been able to properly finish this. It's almost a skill on its own to have all the right ingredients and still produce a game that's this boring. It's like all individual parts of the game are "not bad", but together, somehow, it just feels empty. The entire time you play you're just waiting for something to hook you, but that hook just isn't there. It's similar to Obsidian's another abortion of the 2010's - Tyranny (but that one at least had interesting premise and first act). Do yourself a favor and if you are a fan of true cRPGs, then buy and play Pathfinder games, or go and replay BG1/2/NWN. This isn't it.
Refunded. It has nothing over the previous King's Bounty games, not even visuals. The combat is extremely simplistic, pacing is horrible (e.g. too slow), there are only a few fights on each map. And the 3rd person over the shoulder camera kills it, in my opinion. How do you want to navigate a KB game like this, when 80% of what you do is exploring the map? Absurd design choice that made the game unnecessarily clunky and hard to read, and effectively destroyed this game, all to appeal the "broader audience" (who didn't give a damn in the first place). Save yourself the time and money and go re-play Armored Princess or Dark Side with a different character. Both 1000x better games than this abomination.
The latest update for this game basically promised to restore the original vision of Night City. So did it deliver? Partially. Cops are now much more lifelike - they patrol the streets and actively talk on comms with each other when you are being hunted. However, if you are, then more and more cops in patrol cars get spawned. It's just that unlike in 1.6, where they simply spawned from thin air, they ride a car. Max bounty summons Max-Tac. Not exactly an earth-shattering difference, but makes the game better, imho. The new content in 2.0 and Phantom Liberty itself is very good. New perk trees are mostly fun and well thought-out. They actually change the gameplay instead of "+X% to a random stat". So why the 3 stars? Well, there are some obvious and rather disappointing game design changes and issues. First of all, despite all that shiny new perk tree, 2.0 moved the game more towards looter shooter style of gameplay rather than an RPG. There are forced combat sequences in the new content, and bullet sponge bosses, so pure stealth gameplay is being punished (you are encouraged to combine it with something else). Then there's the atrocious level scaling. CP2077 got the Oblivion treatment for some reason. After a certain level, you will get tons of legendary gear from ordinary enemies, breaking immersion and making crafting very superficial (why craft a purple weapon when the same weapon but in orange category will drop from ordinary chooms in the next ~3 hours of gameplay...) - it now exist to only save you money with hack crafting and upgrading cyberware. Next are the disappointing boss fight mechanics. Bosses used to be like ordinary gonks, just stronger. Now, they have "weak points" and you must hit those, otherwise you have no chance. Bosses are insane bullet sponges and especially hacking / stealth builds will have a lot of problems with them. All in all, I would lying if I said I'm not enjoying 2.0, but I miss some things from previous Cyberpunk.
If you are in market for a classic spy thriller action flick, story line of this DLC should scratch that itch. It has compelling narrative, good characters. So why only 3 stars? Well, because CDPR obviously wanted Phantom Liberty to be everything (Metal Gear, Call of Duty, Hitman, all at once), and to do that, they had to sacrifice some core values and flexibility of their RPG. It doesn't matter which way your V is specced, here is a forced fight. Here is a forced stealth section. Here is a forced spy mini game. Without the possibility to save... To be fair, none of these are hard blocks if you complete them in a way developer didn't intend you to, but you will be scolded by the characters and it just doesn't click with the rest of the game. The rest of the DLC is pretty good, as it has new content besides the story, like weapons, cars, Dogtown location, etc. There's nothing here that you wouldn't have already seen elsewhere, and the bulk of positive (and negative) changes to the game has already been done by the 2.0 update itself, you don't need PL to experience or enjoy it. Buy on sale, or feel safe to ignore this.
This DLC exists solely for the purpose of selling you the extra level progression (up to 16). I cannot wait to see what modders will be doing with this, but, the story DLC itself is kind of a letdown. It starts OK, with fun battles and dialogues, but it all goes down from there, culminating in absolutely aggravating final boss battle. Not tough, mind you, just unfair. The design mistakes and unbelievably stupid lighting rules show their ugly faces there (yes, boss with a giant flaming hammer is somehow "unlit"...). To add insult to injury, the level 16 progression is not nearly enough. The devs made sure to shower you with XP in Palace of Ice, so even if you start a new party at level 10, you will spend the last couple of hours locked at the max level with no prospect of further progression. There is definitely enough XP to get you to level 17, maybe 18, and it only gets more frustrating if you import a level 12 party from CotM campaign - then you will get to 16 extremely quickly and will be twiddling your thumbs for good half of the DLC. Why devs insist to arbitrarily level lock you in games I will never understand - this did it, BG3 did it, for no other reason than to punish good players. Buy only if you are Solasta fan, ideally on sale. Buy only to complete your Solasta collection - the other DLCs add much more substantial content: Lost Valley gives you a fun, and much longer campaign, Inner Strength and Primal Calling will be your go-to's for new, fun classes. This is just a cherry on top when you have played through everything else Solasta. Don't expect much.
The amount of social media propaganda surrounding this title is incredible. "Best game ever", or "the truest DnD PC adaptation" or "GOTY" chants ring through the decrepit pits that is the Internet. The game is mechanically very well done, it has at least somewhat interesting story. It is a DOS2 clone - no wonder since it's on the same engine - but that's, surprisingly, not detrimental, since the original material has always been turn-based. So don't listen to the "no BG if no RTWP" crowd - that is not it. The combat itself is actually good. It's professional, polished work. But that is about where the good things end. The story telling itself has horrible pacing - first you are told that everything is super urgent but of course you waddle around the world for ages. It's the similar trope to DOS2, but it was more believable there. Everything littered with useless loot that will clog your inventory, with UI fighting you all the way. Classic Larian, and veterans of DOS1+2 will remember. Dice rolls are everywhere and failure frequently equals instant death, so, you will be save scumming a lot by design. What a wonderful DM Larian is... Lots of liberties taken with the DnD implementation, too. If you want to see truly the truest implementation on PC, go play Solasta. But all of that is forgivable. What isn't, however, is what Larian did to the NPCs and our beloved characters from BG2. It's 2023, so, there are subverted expectations everywhere, everybody's edgy with some super duper dark secret. Because we can't have a classic simple high fantasy. And if you doubted for a second, this game is also extremely woke. Romances are not "LIMITED" by gender or race... so, ever wondered how would Minsc's romance look like in BG2? Well, he's bi... as is everyone else. So BG3 finally did it. The first woke game that is universally acclaimed. This is the endgame, people, and games like BG2 will NEVER return. If you want that experience, you will have to turn to the past.
Frankly, it's been quite a solid way down in quality for Solasta in the past 6 months or so. The game itself is a good D&D experience, but bugs and occasional bad design are what's dragging it down. First, the devs released their shot at story telling where you can take multiple paths, Lost Valley DLC. That one was horrendous at release, full of bugs, and even now 6 months after release, it is still quite buggy. This one and its accompanying patch is a whole other level, though. Multiplayer is almost unbearable now. Constant de-syncs in combat that force you to reload / re-host the game, characters stuck in terrain not able to move.... Last night we had to reload like three times in a row because the game decided to get stuck in combat, showing that a it's a player's turn, but that player can't actually do anything. So, instead of polishing the core mechanics, we have yet another example of an indie game that went the cash grab route, content before fixes.
