CDPR Devs,
Can't say that I'm not blown away. That was a ride! I didn't finish all the side quests; but still got to Level 43. In 72.5 hrs. I did a Nomad origin, romanced Panam, and got 90% 60% and 40% on the tickers. I might try for the Secret Ending, but I hear you need 70% in Johnny to get it. I am stoked to try a new character out, possibly the Corp next.
I did an Infiltrator Build. Focusing mostly on Sniper Rifles and Pistols with a SMG for when things needed to get loud. Primary weapon was a Legendary Overwatch Sniper Rifle. Holy mess is that weapon powerful. After modding and upgrading it, I was doing upwards of 27,000 on average critical hit, and head shots from stealth were several hundred thousand. Add the fact that I could shoot through walls, my conflicts pretty much were PING, SCOPE, SHOOT. And I would occasionally mix things up with the Silenced Crash Revolver. Also devastating when doing headshots. My playstyle was to avoid the Fast Travel System as much as I could, occasionally using it if I absolutely didn't want to drive. Below are some bugs or thoughts I had, and been taking; as I played the game...
-- Start Copy Paste --
- Ambient noise in bars with televisions. It's too loud, I have to turn down the SFX volume to hear conversations.
- The radio in the car, maybe put a volume control in-game instead of having to escape out to control the volume. There are some good songs in this game, but not all are created equally, there are a few I like to blast, and a few I can enjoy a little quieter.
- Fortunate Son Quest: Allow the option to ESCAPE the police if you'd rather not do a lethal exit...
- The motorcycle suddenly stopped making engine sounds... reloading didn't fix... restart fixed it.
- Subtitles! Even if they're off, they'll sometimes get stuck either over a NPC or at the bottom of the screen. Turning them on and then back off clears them out. This often happens when doing a reload during the Beast Racing segments.
- I Fought the Law Quest: Quest glitch that causes 'find a way into the Red Queens Race' to not be completable. However; the quest will continue once you enter the club. Could still complete the quest, though.
- V's head gear and hair vanishes when looking into mirrors, or when viewing himself from another perspective (i.e. the Panam romance scene)
- Sometimes the reflections wig out, I had Takemura's body, with only his head, legs and some of his arms visible.
- Play It Safe Quest: Needs better optimizing. FPS was struggling on 2K settings with a Ryzen 9 and 2080ti. The Oda boss fight ALSO glitched. A LOT, giving Oda God Mode and making it an impossible fight.
- Dream On Quest: 'Follow the Cables' objective was broken, probably because I did it in the wrong order.
- The Game sometimes wouldn't exit after exiting. I would have to kill the process in my task manager or close and exit Galaxy for it to close.
- Stealth is just bad (can’t think of a way to soften this up). If an explosion goes off in the middle of nowhere, and nobody has LOS of my character, then everyone should investigate the event, right? Same if a turret starts opening fire on enemies (even if it is manually controlled), then they should engage the turret instead of everyone coming after me. The AI suddenly deduces my location and begins to attack me anyways. Solutions--
- Rework the AI so that they have levels of alertness, which either increases or decreases their sensitivity to things out of the ordinary (bodies, explosions, hacking, etc).
- Enemies should not home in on me because a turret further away suddenly starts firing at people. A single turret goes off, an the entire level magically knows where I am at. Take inspiration from Splinter Cell, Crysis, Deus Ex, or Dishonored stealth mechanics.
- The AI should have to find me before attacking me, it doesn’t make sense for them to see an explosion and just pivot on the spot to open fire on me.
- Dashing in this game is nigh pointless. Your enemies will close the distance regardless and their attacks make up for the trivial amount of ground you get away from with no problem.
- RIOT club doesn’t have music, just people dancing to silence.
- Stadium Love Quest: After drinking, my character won’t pull out his weapon to shoot and the clock is ticking. Reloading can fix the issue.
- I can buy into the idea that murder is easily detected; but the netrunners who have no LOS of me that can hack me are OP. Considering that my character can’t hack them because of the lack of clear line of sight. Granted, the counter is pretty OP, with the fact that there are weapons than can punch through multiple layers of concrete and the like.
- Sweet Dreams: You couldn’t make a new level for this one? It’s the same level as the first Jackie mission to save that Corp girl from Scavs.
- There is a missed opportunity to add creative ways to kill enemies, I would like the ability to kick my enemies, in a manner that would allow me to kick enemies off ledges (there are enough vertical sections
- Looting… if my crosshairs are on it, and it’s in reach, I should be able to lift it, yeah?
- Arasaka Drones are really hard to loot, sometimes you get the goods, most of the time you don’t.
- Fix V’s shadow, it looks really weird when you have your weapon drawn.
- Popups will come up on the screen and then stay up (weapon details window, for example). Reloading fixes.
- Knocking on Heaven’s Door Quest: When taking the elevator to the Netrunner Operations Control, your bro will block the elevator if you don’t get in it first.
- Path of Glory: Hotel room, the sounds of shower keep going and going until credits. Also, it’s rather weird to see V’s invisible reflection.
-- End Copy Paste --
--FINAL THOUGHTS--
I only had 2 CTD's in the 70 hours I played, only happening during reloading. There were a number of bugs that I didn't write down that didn't bother me, other than V's hair would ALWAYS disappear during cutscenes, typically because I wore a hat or something.
-- On the topic of character customization, I wished I could have something to change the appearance of my character, even if it's just the hair. Additionally, I really would have liked to have Geralt's beard growing... But that aside, I felt an itch to customize my character's face every so often and was disappointed that it wasn't included, despite how easily face alterations could be in this world.
I really liked Panam as a character, she was fun and was a sharp contrast to some of the other characters. I was a little disappointed with how she pretty much bowed out after her quests were completed. Minimal interaction after the quests were done. This is contrasted by Judy, who ended up leaving NC, but sent me texts and pictures several hours after I completed her questline. Honestly, I thought her leaving NC was the best ending, because she started sounding happy again. I'll have to see what happens if she stays in my next playthrough. For Panam, maybe having additional content, text messages with random banter or what not, or woohoo scene if you've romanced her, so that you're not just up and dry done with her, would be nice.
Driving... woof; I'm pretty sure you've seen the forums about driving. But something needs to be altered. Best I can recommend is probably swapping camera movement from looking to 'this is the direction you will drive' and the A and D keys are for something else. Movement aside, I would LOVE to have a radio control feature that allows me to adjust the radio volume IN GAME. Awesome tunes, but it sucks to have to go into the escape menu to change the volume. For the google-maps driving, maybe put a visual direction driving indicator on the road, and make it so that the player would have to use the scanner to see it. Makes sense with the lore, right?
I got excited when the Albracodos Ripper (I think) mentioned active camouflage stealth cloaking, but saw that it wasn't integrated into the game. That's a bummer. But speaking on implants, I'd like to see more implants that have more tangible gameplay elements. I used the mono-wire, and thought it was rather underwhelming. It could also be that I'm used to Deus Ex Mankind Divided, and got used to the cybernetics they have in that game. But in short, I'm hopeful to see more flavor in the cybernetics in the future!
OVERALL, this is a game I'm going to play again, and I'm looking forward to the next adventure, trying new things out. I discovered that you could get bonuses for bringing in marks alive when I was today years old. So maybe I'll take the route of pacifist or at least keep the marks alive, in my next run through; which is looking to be a Katana and shotty run!
Can't say that I'm not blown away. That was a ride! I didn't finish all the side quests; but still got to Level 43. In 72.5 hrs. I did a Nomad origin, romanced Panam, and got 90% 60% and 40% on the tickers. I might try for the Secret Ending, but I hear you need 70% in Johnny to get it. I am stoked to try a new character out, possibly the Corp next.
I did an Infiltrator Build. Focusing mostly on Sniper Rifles and Pistols with a SMG for when things needed to get loud. Primary weapon was a Legendary Overwatch Sniper Rifle. Holy mess is that weapon powerful. After modding and upgrading it, I was doing upwards of 27,000 on average critical hit, and head shots from stealth were several hundred thousand. Add the fact that I could shoot through walls, my conflicts pretty much were PING, SCOPE, SHOOT. And I would occasionally mix things up with the Silenced Crash Revolver. Also devastating when doing headshots. My playstyle was to avoid the Fast Travel System as much as I could, occasionally using it if I absolutely didn't want to drive. Below are some bugs or thoughts I had, and been taking; as I played the game...
-- Start Copy Paste --
- Ambient noise in bars with televisions. It's too loud, I have to turn down the SFX volume to hear conversations.
- The radio in the car, maybe put a volume control in-game instead of having to escape out to control the volume. There are some good songs in this game, but not all are created equally, there are a few I like to blast, and a few I can enjoy a little quieter.
- Fortunate Son Quest: Allow the option to ESCAPE the police if you'd rather not do a lethal exit...
- The motorcycle suddenly stopped making engine sounds... reloading didn't fix... restart fixed it.
- Subtitles! Even if they're off, they'll sometimes get stuck either over a NPC or at the bottom of the screen. Turning them on and then back off clears them out. This often happens when doing a reload during the Beast Racing segments.
- I Fought the Law Quest: Quest glitch that causes 'find a way into the Red Queens Race' to not be completable. However; the quest will continue once you enter the club. Could still complete the quest, though.
- V's head gear and hair vanishes when looking into mirrors, or when viewing himself from another perspective (i.e. the Panam romance scene)
- Sometimes the reflections wig out, I had Takemura's body, with only his head, legs and some of his arms visible.
- Play It Safe Quest: Needs better optimizing. FPS was struggling on 2K settings with a Ryzen 9 and 2080ti. The Oda boss fight ALSO glitched. A LOT, giving Oda God Mode and making it an impossible fight.
- Dream On Quest: 'Follow the Cables' objective was broken, probably because I did it in the wrong order.
- The Game sometimes wouldn't exit after exiting. I would have to kill the process in my task manager or close and exit Galaxy for it to close.
- Stealth is just bad (can’t think of a way to soften this up). If an explosion goes off in the middle of nowhere, and nobody has LOS of my character, then everyone should investigate the event, right? Same if a turret starts opening fire on enemies (even if it is manually controlled), then they should engage the turret instead of everyone coming after me. The AI suddenly deduces my location and begins to attack me anyways. Solutions--
- Rework the AI so that they have levels of alertness, which either increases or decreases their sensitivity to things out of the ordinary (bodies, explosions, hacking, etc).
- Enemies should not home in on me because a turret further away suddenly starts firing at people. A single turret goes off, an the entire level magically knows where I am at. Take inspiration from Splinter Cell, Crysis, Deus Ex, or Dishonored stealth mechanics.
- The AI should have to find me before attacking me, it doesn’t make sense for them to see an explosion and just pivot on the spot to open fire on me.
- Dashing in this game is nigh pointless. Your enemies will close the distance regardless and their attacks make up for the trivial amount of ground you get away from with no problem.
- RIOT club doesn’t have music, just people dancing to silence.
- Stadium Love Quest: After drinking, my character won’t pull out his weapon to shoot and the clock is ticking. Reloading can fix the issue.
- I can buy into the idea that murder is easily detected; but the netrunners who have no LOS of me that can hack me are OP. Considering that my character can’t hack them because of the lack of clear line of sight. Granted, the counter is pretty OP, with the fact that there are weapons than can punch through multiple layers of concrete and the like.
- Sweet Dreams: You couldn’t make a new level for this one? It’s the same level as the first Jackie mission to save that Corp girl from Scavs.
- There is a missed opportunity to add creative ways to kill enemies, I would like the ability to kick my enemies, in a manner that would allow me to kick enemies off ledges (there are enough vertical sections
- Looting… if my crosshairs are on it, and it’s in reach, I should be able to lift it, yeah?
- Arasaka Drones are really hard to loot, sometimes you get the goods, most of the time you don’t.
- Fix V’s shadow, it looks really weird when you have your weapon drawn.
- Popups will come up on the screen and then stay up (weapon details window, for example). Reloading fixes.
- Knocking on Heaven’s Door Quest: When taking the elevator to the Netrunner Operations Control, your bro will block the elevator if you don’t get in it first.
- Path of Glory: Hotel room, the sounds of shower keep going and going until credits. Also, it’s rather weird to see V’s invisible reflection.
-- End Copy Paste --
--FINAL THOUGHTS--
I only had 2 CTD's in the 70 hours I played, only happening during reloading. There were a number of bugs that I didn't write down that didn't bother me, other than V's hair would ALWAYS disappear during cutscenes, typically because I wore a hat or something.
-- On the topic of character customization, I wished I could have something to change the appearance of my character, even if it's just the hair. Additionally, I really would have liked to have Geralt's beard growing... But that aside, I felt an itch to customize my character's face every so often and was disappointed that it wasn't included, despite how easily face alterations could be in this world.
I really liked Panam as a character, she was fun and was a sharp contrast to some of the other characters. I was a little disappointed with how she pretty much bowed out after her quests were completed. Minimal interaction after the quests were done. This is contrasted by Judy, who ended up leaving NC, but sent me texts and pictures several hours after I completed her questline. Honestly, I thought her leaving NC was the best ending, because she started sounding happy again. I'll have to see what happens if she stays in my next playthrough. For Panam, maybe having additional content, text messages with random banter or what not, or woohoo scene if you've romanced her, so that you're not just up and dry done with her, would be nice.
Driving... woof; I'm pretty sure you've seen the forums about driving. But something needs to be altered. Best I can recommend is probably swapping camera movement from looking to 'this is the direction you will drive' and the A and D keys are for something else. Movement aside, I would LOVE to have a radio control feature that allows me to adjust the radio volume IN GAME. Awesome tunes, but it sucks to have to go into the escape menu to change the volume. For the google-maps driving, maybe put a visual direction driving indicator on the road, and make it so that the player would have to use the scanner to see it. Makes sense with the lore, right?
I got excited when the Albracodos Ripper (I think) mentioned active camouflage stealth cloaking, but saw that it wasn't integrated into the game. That's a bummer. But speaking on implants, I'd like to see more implants that have more tangible gameplay elements. I used the mono-wire, and thought it was rather underwhelming. It could also be that I'm used to Deus Ex Mankind Divided, and got used to the cybernetics they have in that game. But in short, I'm hopeful to see more flavor in the cybernetics in the future!
OVERALL, this is a game I'm going to play again, and I'm looking forward to the next adventure, trying new things out. I discovered that you could get bonuses for bringing in marks alive when I was today years old. So maybe I'll take the route of pacifist or at least keep the marks alive, in my next run through; which is looking to be a Katana and shotty run!
