Okay, honestly at the beginning in very hard, I take 3-4 balls (or even less) and I am dead so I really do not see where is the "god mode" of which you speak. Yes at the end, I could feel more powerful, but I do all for that (guns/clothes mods/cyberwares/QH). But even with that, I can die pretty easily in open combat.
Okay. Yeah, you die from two bullets unless you stack armor. But... when are you ever forced to "open combat" aka tanking dmg? The triviality of CP77 combat stems from
1) the VERY limited AI that never really forces you to adapt any strategies that put you in danger. It's shooting ducks, mostly. One-shotting. They are very static, as if they WANTED to line up for headshots. They totally don't react to grenades, tech weapons, being pinned down by a sniper, AoE effects, etc. Also, AI in CP has big problems traversing the environment. In many encounters, all it takes is cross the street, and they can't follow you. (But honestly except the first few levels you never have to do that unless you play naked, in a normal game you just kill everyone before they blink).
2) Very slow animations and low aggression. Between the time you are noticed to the time when you are in danger, you usually have ages. You can one-shot 3-5 guys before you see any bullets (or 10-20 on Sandevistan). Once you start one-shotting, you end encounters faster than you can loot them.
3) They overdid the lower-aggression-when-not-looked-at trick. Many games do that, but CP overdid it so much. When you turn your back to them to get to the next cover, their aggression is like halved. You can do that always. This can carry you through the game even when playing naked (no perks, attributes, cybers). Also, stun locks are overdone - but again this is only relevant when you gimp your offense on purpose. If you don't you just one-shoot everything.
4) Armor. It is in fact a percentage dmg reduction scaling up linearly with flat armor. 1000 armor = about 12% dmg redux (this is why first half of the game armor is pretty much useless, and then quite suddenly you get immortal). With cold blood you can get immortality. 7500-8500 armor gets you there, as depending on level difference modifiers it should stack to 99% dmg reduction. Who designed it? I don't know.
5) Fantasy mechanics. Sandevistan and Quickhacking. This is what I mean by total noninteractivity. Once you get to Street Cred 20 to buy QianT MK4 from Fingers, you're god mode (but other Sandevistans also get you there). You can get 16s slow mo with 4s downtime - so virtually permanent slow mo where enemies can't act. You basically freeze the world, legit, as a default game mechanics, no cheats. Quickhacks? Once you get the cheap Raven (upgraded later to Netwatch), golden Ping and Contagion, you clear whole levels with two clicks of a mouse, in total safety. Does anyone with some experience in gaming really think this is not broken?
I really like this game for how it looks and feels but these things are totally ruining it. CDPR desperately needs experienced gameplay and AI devs (or/and management who will actually let them finish their work). This is imo amateur hour.
Also, some of those things might have changed aka gotten ninja fixed. They did that to a few things. This info is mostly from 1.1.
