HotA does bring new extremely polished factions along with campaigns fully utilising them. But that's not all, it brings an enormous amount of bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements, including OpenGL rendering, system cursors, and - obviously - custom resolutions, all through HD Mod. Extremely recommended, coming from a fan since 1998. I truly appreciate GOG supporting the incredible work of HotA Crew.
...I tend to think it's at least a little unjust. Pre-ordered the game consciously not having watched a single trailer or teaser, I actively avoided them. Moreover, I haven't even started the migthy franchise of The Witcher (got too old for binge-playing anything a long time ago, and still have lots of started-not-finished gaming debts from the last 15 years or so). I just knew that CDPR makes good things. Reason? GOG (I'm a Linux user and don't even get me started on DRM). Cyberpunk 2077 is my very first pre-order. I didn't even plan to play it right away - first I wanted to built myself a shiny new state-of-the-art PC capable of ripping through threads using server-grade amounts of RAM and whatnot, if you catch my drift. But then I got curious how playable the game would be on my sort of mid/high-specced machine from about 8 years ago. Seriously, I didn't expect CP77 to perform this good on my PC on patch 1.01. Like, tinkered with settings a bit, got about 55 average FPS in FullHD right away. Again, I did not expect my machine to squeeze out more than 15-ish FPS (that's actually the case if I switch to 4K resolution). So I played on to explore the performance more... And got sunk in the atmosphere and the story, which are the things I care most in video games (that's the reason I tolerated even questionable gameplay in Brütal Legend--except for being a metalhead). So I got hooked on the game I didn't intend to play, and on an underperforming machine. Had worse performance when played HL2 in 2004 and didn't think it ruined my experience. Bugs are present, but don't break immersion or gameplay for me, and I'm pretty sure CDPR will iron them out. Any kind of release of similar scope will be ridden with bugs at start. It's software after all. I'm not far in the main story yet. I wander around the city randomly and get involved in side-jobs and gigs. Don't like to rush games anyways. My opinion on the game: it's really good (and I can't wait to build my new PC).
But was too lazy. Can't stop myself from a little offtopic here: a good buddy of mine wrote the soundtrack (at least a good portion of it). When he told me about it, he provided me with a link to the game in another digital store. Still, I was too forgetful to ever go and actually buy it there. And of course I forgot to check if it is present on GOG. Now that I see it here on sale... Well, I'm all for supporting developers who paid my friend for his music. On GOG!
A friend of mine was leading Russian localization of CoJ in 2006, and I was pretty envious because she could play it on a high-end rig at work while I couldn't at all (my machine wouldn't run it). Call of Juarez was somewhat a hit in Russia back then, and was widely hyped for being one of the first DX10 games around. I didn't manage to play it at the time, and beat it only in 2016 or 2017, though (obviously) on maximum eye candy, which I could only dream of 10 years before. Yes, the game has rough edges, namely numerously mentioned in revews here shooting mechanic, platforming and puzzles. The dialogue could be better and so on and so on. It all is palpable during gameplay, but anyway, after final cutscene I had this fond aftertaste. Even though I was at times annoyed with CoJ, in the end it turned out the game kept me emotionally involved with the story all the time. It made me want to play the prequel instantly! Technically, Call of Juarez probably doesn't deserve 5/5, but I just can't rate it lower, I'm just a human.
