So....after a few hours into act 2 - its fabulous. Honestly from a scope and gameplay level it's unparallelled. There's bugs, there's things that annoy me but christ it's good. CHRIST it's good. It's one of those rare games that get's better, and better, and better the longer you play. Witcher 3 was like that. This is at least as good, and in some ways better as it didn't have the lore to back it up.
My earlier reviews still stand. It takes ages to get the settings right on PC and even then there are bugs. I do wish that they hadn't have bothered trying to optimise 7 year old consoles (it clearly didn't work) as they could have concentrated on the recent releases (sorry ps4 and xbox one owners, but you have aged architecture, next gen games require next gen hardware) but it's a small cog in this massive awesome machine that is night city.
The bugs are a pain but I haven’t seen anything really game breaking yet.
For example when I put all my gear and weapons into my stash at my apartment all the weapon stats read as 0.00 and even sorting the gear by quality, DPS, price etc has no effect. As others have noted the looking into the mirror bug and seeing that you have no haul at is a bit odd, given that it seems to be fine in the inventory menu.
At this point a lot of the characters, story and mission dialogue tends to go over my head. They throw so much at you I forget some of the detail. I’m sure it will all make sense on repeat play throughs but I think they could have done a better job at easing you into this world.
However, with all that said, when you are exploring, taking in the sights, driving aripound, doing some of the side content, hacking, stealthily neutralising enemies or getting into brutal firefights it all comes together and those issues fade away.
Edit: I have noticed a difference because of removing film grain, removing depth of field filter which was making stuff in the background blurry, removing motion blur, removing text dialogue over peoples heads. I’ve also increased the text font (which sadly isn’t reflected in the menus) and unfortunately there’s no option to change that red coloured font.
Well I took some time to read through all of the ‘?’ (game help/manual) information in the Database and feel much more clued in to how to play.
I’m loving the stealth / breach protocol approach, which might take longer than the immediacy of going in all guns blazing but I’m finding it so rewarding. I’ve just been helping out the police / doing their jobs for them and you get experience for hacking into stuff, neutralising enemies with stealth takedowns and, after the mission is over (here is a top tip for people not even using stealth) - you get 100 stealth experience points for hiding enemies in dumpsters in addition to the 100 experience you get from the takedown itself. So if you aren’t playing stealthily and feel you might want to switch to it later on then this is a good way to accrue some stealth perk points.
Of course, it isn’t always possible to be completely stealthy. When you turn up to a crime scene and there is already a firefight in progress for example.
I’m playing on Xbox One X and I don’t have a 4K TV. I’m perfectly happy with the level of detail and the frame rate so far. Given how much is going on in front of you on screen at any one time I think it is already a remarkable achievement. I’ve seen some negative comments comparing it to how well Red Dead Redemption 2 runs and I don’t think that is a fair comparison given how densely packed and sprawling Night City is and frame rate issues in the big city of Red Dead Redemption 2 happened on the base consoles at launch.
I had a lengthy, bug-free session last night, and I enjoyed every second. I’m trying my best to stick to a stealth/hacking play style but it always descends into a firefight by the end. Hopefully once I earn more upgrades, that’ll help.
I’ve turned off all the graphic options, which does make it lose the attempted gritty movie style atmosphere but it makes things look much crisper & less blurry.
Blimey! Whatever you do, don’t annoy the cops. I was attempting to save a citizen from a nasty gang & I guess my wayward shooting forced an eyewitness to grass me in & even on level one wanted, it took me ages to run away & stealth it out.
Been nethacking my way thru several side missions & stealth is starting to be effective...
One thing to try if you are having problems separating groups of enemies is to distract one to say, a floodlight and then as that distraction is wearing off get them distracted by another electronic device. If you can chain these distractions together you can separate them from the group making it much easier. Also remember once you have them in a choke hold you can still move for a while before neutralising them.
Edit: I thought I wanted to put lots of points into the ‘Cool’ attribute specifically for Stealth but ‘Intelligence’ has Quickhacking and Breach Protocol so they complement stealth tactics really well. But the guns are really good in this game as well so I might spec heavily into crafting with the aim of creating the best weapons to offset any limitations I have in specific firearm skills. That way I get to use a lot of the systems in the game. Not really sure if you have to specialise or being a jack of all trades is viable.
The new patch has certainly improved the visuals & the HDR seems to work better too. Apart from having to reload my previous auto save, I’ve had no further major bugs, just the occasional graphical glitch.
The main story missions are superb, well directed, good choreography and genuinely emotional when things go wrong. Things definitely improve towards the end of Act one, after a slow beginning. Once they get rid of the bugs/glitches, this will eventually live up to the hype...
Can you not gain experience points in a skill if the governing attribute isn’t higher than that skill? For example, if your Cool attribute is at 6 your Stealth skill can’t reach 7.
there was issues with witcher 3 (not to this level) but they really fixed up the game. Hopefully down the line we get expansion that is the quality of heart and stone and Blood and wine expansions
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"Eat the multi-billion dollar corporate slop and pretend it's social justice, you weirdos"
(sorry ps4 and xbox one owners, but you have aged architecture, next gen games require next gen hardware)
That really doesn't cut it at all. They've released it on all platforms so it should work on them all.
Next issue is that not everyone can get the new consoles, and I'd wager most copies will have been sold for PS4 and One so big mistake by them to not get it right for older consoles.
I guess it will be patched soon and most issues will be sorted. They'll have to otherwise they'll take a loss with all the refunds. People are going to complete it and then ask for a refund. There will be a lot of copies under wraps for Christmas day.
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Xbox Gamertag - Roland Sausage (Artist formerly known as Billy the Biff)
That really doesn't cut it at all. They've released it on all platforms so it should work on them all.
Next issue is that not everyone can get the new consoles, and I'd wager most copies will have been sold for PS4 and One so big mistake by them to not get it right for older consoles.
I guess it will be patched soon and most issues will be sorted. They'll have to otherwise they'll take a loss with all the refunds. People are going to complete it and then ask for a refund. There will be a lot of copies under wraps for Christmas day.
They should have made it PC only and launched Next Gen versions next spring once they got the bugs out of the PC code.
They should have made it PC only and launched Next Gen versions next spring once they got the bugs out of the PC code.
This, absolutely this. The comparisons to RDR2 and the last of us are misleading. Especially the last of us which was a linear game. RDR2 was at least open world, but boy was it open. That's the difference, it's so full of detail that it's hard to compare.
I do feel for PS4 and Xbox owners and they should never have said what they did because attempting to shoehorn it is has no doubt contributed to the bugs on PC, which would probably have been fixed (or at least less of a delay).
It's a real shame cause it really is a very very good game.
Linear Mode
