(About 9h into it, though with a ton of trial and failure in figuring the mechanics out.) Yes, the story/dialogue and decision system seems impressive. And so easy to fuck up (and then difficulty to undo unless you manually saved last checkpoint). While many playstyles probably work, I find there being too many sections where they break the stealth for me. And with the pistol being useless beyond 6-10 meters, it takes a long time waiting for the perk to cool down to get more "long range" shots in. The most annoying part is how much room for improvement there is. Like hanging out with a really funny and interesting friend, who at random times punches you in the face.
Yes, there are issues. Many performance issues are probably mitigated here as I got a RTX 4080 Super OC during black friday sales and first started playing with that. While it dips at times, it had not bothered me greatly. With frame generation performance is solid, or will be when that stops causing CTD's every few hours. I usually get 50-60 FPS, maybe. Down to ~30 in some cutscenes, though not really that noticable if I didn't have the counter in the corner. The quests are fun, the gunplay is great. Most weapons seem rather good, causing a need for decisions about whether to upgrade current weapon, or save the money to invest in a better one a bit later. The environment, and basically everything graphic, looks incredible. While the a-life isn't there yet, the nature itself feels alive with wind, storms, and otherwise rough weather. Even with somewhat frequent saving, I can very much feel the rush in intense fights, knowing both me and the (human) enemies can die extremely fast. The mutants, sometimes less so. I find the first person cutscenes to flow really well, and add to the immersion in a way that could easily be lacking for storytelling without them. So many familiar names of people and places, but with interesting new lore. Then again, I really enoyed and was greatly immersed in Cyberpunk 2077 at launch, too. I'm halfway at best, spending a lot of time messing around. So far I am more than satisfied with the ultimate edition. Good starting point, I think it'll only get better. Both from official patches, and mods.
It has given me so much joy through the years. Back in the day, it was pretty damn woah. I am comparing it a bit to its younger siblings, where certain aspects are vastly improved. The audio in the cutscenes does not seem affected by the ingame audio settings. Computers has changed a bit since its release, but there are fixes that fixes some of the annoyances. You can fix the resolution by modifying config files in vanilla, but I'd say the widescreen fix is preferable. Here's the widescreen fix, which seems to work very well for the keypads and such. https://thirteenag.github.io/wfp#sc If you want a minor graphical improvement, you can also use the PS3 textures. https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Tom_Clancy's_Splinter_Cell#HD_Textures_from_the_PS3_version
