it takes a long time to relate to night city – and to understand why: in my third run just starting to get the hang. surprisingly it's not about rpg vs. looter-shooter. nor about the npcs or the the city being too small (for a mega-city). first i felt the city was too sterile, but it’s not: proper dirty and meticulously designed. It is YOU, your character – V. – that is sterile: as a corpo you don’t even have a bar to hang, somewhere where the barkeep knows what you need before you do. as a streetkid the city should be brimming with memories & people you know. it’s only now – playing as a nomad – that V. finally feels in the right place: lost. you are a newbie-greenhorn knowing nothing and nobody. AND you also need to know the game mechanics – namely hacking – to properly enjoy the game. BUT you only ever need these particular game mechanics once you start playing on (very) hard. at lower difficulty levels neither the choice of weapon nor anything else (stealth mode, hacking) really matters: as long as you are not getting caught in a cross-fire of several people you should do fine. so once you start NEEDING ping and a better cyberdeck – fast! – the game starts to open up – a bit. unfortunately the makers have decided to use the matrix-look (crt-green) for everything digital. so night citie’s cyberspace feels very 1990s rather than 2070s. but then again, once you get the hang of what breach protocol, quickhacking, daemons, kiroshi and mikoshi do you may finally start to relate to a game that is as much a promise for the future as an unfinished masterpiece for what it currently is. ps: please guys: you are a bloody MERC on the trip of his life. so you want to go to strip clubs, spend the night with one or two handful hookers, go fine dining with a bunch of guys and/or girls, and elegantly/naughtily dress them before fully(!) undressing them. the non-existence of serious adult entertainment in a city of sex & crime is a MAJOR immersion breaker.
