>>42159352I know what cyberpunk is, it's actually one of my favorite genres. I was talking about what genre of game, like, y'know, rpg, shooter, etc. Though I understand how easy to misconstrue my question was.
But I've already played it now, and the answer was it's the Skyrim/Fallout/GTA RPG subgenre, which is a great subgenre I enjoy! And this is honestly my favorite of them.
Cons:
It's really short if you don't do the sidestories, but you aren't particularly encouraged to do them, leading to this awkward pacing where I walked right up to the point of no return in only a couple days playing, then got the message saying "This triggers the final part of the game, that'll be it, so you should probably do all the side missions if you're ever gonna." and felt obligated to suddenly lose all narrative momentum to go do unrelated things.
While they avoided the Bethesda Pose problem where peoples' movements and stares are soulless, otherwise it still looks like a slightly shinier FO4, so I'm surprised it was advertised on graphics.
There are tons of visual and physics bugs, which, while they don't affect the gameplay, feel even more jarring than your classic Skyrim shenanigans, which is pretty jarring.
Cars control poorly and are generally not pleasant to use, though motorcycles are actually a blast.
The morality is handled really weirdly. You're often highly conversationally punished for doing anything Johnny doesn't want, despite the fact that he's far from perfect, for starters. Also, the handling of cops is all over the place - they're clearly a severe problem just like in real life, going so far as to actively be shown inplot and ingame as usually being heartless killing machines, but apart from a single chance to say "pig" early in the game, you are never given the opportunity to express negative emotions toward them other than how they're supposedly UNDERfunded and not very helpful. Which just comes off as unrealistic, immersion-breaking and weird, especially if you're playing as a criminal streetrat, who's undoubtedly had dozens of friends killed by these guys.
PROS:
By far the best implementation of unusual approaches to combat that I've experienced in a Skyrimlike. Stealth, hacking, melee, and non-lethality are all given almost equal utility to just killing people with guns. At least in my experience playing only using those options.
They kinda made their own unique attack style with quickhacks, and it's a really cool one, allowing you to freeze time and select from a list of various status effects what you'd like to spend your mana on, basically turning the game into an "intermittently turn based" old school RPG except all your opponents still attack in realtime. It also greatly bolsters stealth gameplay, since it doubles as both a way to quietly disable defenses and security, and a quiet ranged attack that never misses.
You aren't forced to ever use the crafting system, thank fucking god holy shit. I hate crafting systems and how games are all forced to have them now regardless of whether they need one, and hell, it might be really good, but I'm just so glad to not be forced to use it and I never will. This also extends to most things - you're never put in a situation where you're forced to take advantage of one specific skill, and all the others will only do it much worse or not at all. Things are usually pretty even. No content is hidden away from you this way, you get to interact with everything, without having to roll multiple different characters, which is a massive relief.
The characters feel waaay more real in terms of personality, and your relationship with them outside of utility feels real, and like it was written by someone who's writing what they know. Most notably, the lesbian option feels like a real, modern lesbian relationship - it starts with both parties awkwardly putting their feelers out to make sure they're not trying to romance a straight girl, and when it kicks off, suddenly there's lots of cuddling and flirting and cutesy text messages full of emoticons and dadjokes. And the sex scene isn't done the way straight dudes like to imagine lesbian sex works; it feels legitimate too.
I actually give even the slightest shit about the plot, since it's well written for a video game, and I feel like I can play as any sort of person who exists in the setting without the plot refuting that or the gameplay discouraging it - like, I can pour all my points into intelligence, and solve every single problem via hacking and clever thinking, and not only does it work just as well as a fighting build, but nobody around me is like "Oh wow V, you're a top notch fighter who kills people with guns all the time! The reason your clients hire you is as muscle, that's what you do, you're a muscly muscle person!" Which sounds like a weird and specific thing to dwell on, but that happens so often in games like this. Don't tell me I'm a warrior when I run a purely stealth build with no combat prowess outside of critting someone from behind, y'know?
Also, the ending made me cry. I mean, the first ending I got, anyway. Wanna go for more later.
So overall this actually turned out to be my favorite within the genre, and a great relief for someone who's long since lost the ability to emotionally invest in yet another Fallout game or whatever, instead of just buying it to blitz-explore and dick around. For me, this was 200% worth the hype.
Here's a picture of my character who I intentionally designed to look as much as possible like a useless fucking nerd who can't do anything to contribute to anyone except hack really well. I'm proud of her for leaving the house, let alone handling the plot.
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