CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 + Phantom Liberty Expansion Thread

[gurugeorge]

So, is this game finally worth playing after 3.5 years? Should I play it?

Few questions I would be happy to get answers for:
- is this playable without doing any shooting? I'm not talking about non-lethal playthrough, but maybe pure melee build, is it feasible? I hate shooting in games.
- any memorable moments the game offers? Stuff that makes you think about the game after you're done?
- are characters well written?
- how is side quest quality?
- how woke it is?
- can I play regular 2.0 and skip Phantom Liberty altogether, or would I be missing something important?

Thanks in advance.

Yes, you can feasibly do a playthrough with builds focused around katana or other bladed weapons, with throwing knives/axes (for a stealth playthrough), with fists (with Gorilla Arms) or blunt weapons. You will need some ranged option though, even if it's just the missile launcher arms or throwing knives (or of course quickhacks).

The game has quite a few memorable moments dotted throughout. A few things will probably stay with you. Obvs it depends on how much you get into the characters and themes. If you ever wondered about the typical Cyberpunk tropes like AI, uploading, the social consequences of the kind of technology depicted, etc., the game gives a decent amount of food for thought on that level.

Some characters (including some of the minor side-characters) are well-written and memorable, others just average. There aren't any real stinkers, they're all pretty competently drawn.

Side quests are a big part of the draw of the game (both side-quests proper as the game calls them, which are attached to the main quest, and "gigs" which are just short fixer quests, but often quite good and memorable). There are also a lot of things you just stumble across (often with shards lying around describing what happened), some of which are very good, although they're just little scenarios.

It's got a fairly low woke quotient and there's very little LGBGQQ+ bs, but it's heavily multiracial.

I wouldn't skip Phantom Liberty, it has some great set pieces. That said, it's quite considerably more taxing on one's system than the main game, so watch out if you've got a potato (turns out rendering a pile of junk is quite taxing on the old polygon-pushing )

I mean, basically, the gist of it is that it's not the great RPG that was promised for many years, and it never will be, but after some work on the game from CDPR (basically copying what modders had done to improve the game, although it's quite possible CDPR had similar plans anyway for some of the tweaks) it's turned out to be a fun action-adventure game in its own way. I would recommend taking advantage of the asynchronous quest delivery (e.g. if someone says "meet you at midnight at x" you can leave them hanging for all eternity and it doesn't matter) and get yourself up to a decent level by clearing Watson (of Regina's gigs and of police quests) before doing the Heist (so you've got some build toys to play with before entering the game proper), and then regularly doing bouts of breaking off from the main/side quests and just wandering around as it takes your fancy. A fair chunk of the fun of the game is just wandering around enjoying the ambience of Night City, both day and night, and coming across little fights and scenarios in the open world.

 

[Wesp5]

The game has quite a few memorable moments dotted throughout. A few things will probably stay with you.

I still remember the observation of a future target while discussing things with an ally and watching a cat .

 

[just]

i still remember you cant skip those cutscenes

 

[lightbane]

i still remember you cant skip those cutscenes

Mods fix it, I think.

https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/3278

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Justicar]

- is this playable without doing any shooting? I'm not talking about non-lethal playthrough, but maybe pure melee build, is it feasible? I hate shooting in games.

Yes you can finish the whole game with melee and there is good selection of melee weapons mantis blades, katanas, gorrila arms, baseball bats, crowbars, etc.

- any memorable moments the game offers? Stuff that makes you think about the game after you're done?

Yes

- are characters well written?

Yes

- how is side quest quality?

Actual side quests range from good to great, gigs are like witcher contracts and focus more on gameplay than story some are banal shit boring but others are actually pretty good,

- how woke it is?

Not very? There is one tranny in main game and one in dlc and couple of faggots but on the other hand you can slaughter whole gang of dindus (you can do that again in the dlc) and bully a stereotypical faggot in the main quest.

- can I play regular 2.0 and skip Phantom Liberty altogether, or would I be missing something important?

You miss out on kino.

 

[lukaszek]

- is this playable without doing any shooting? I'm not talking about non-lethal playthrough, but maybe pure melee build, is it feasible? I hate shooting in games.

fyi non-lethal got different meaning here. Blunt melee weapons are non lethal, there is also cyberware that makes your attacks non lethal.
To add what others said, not only melee is viable, you can also do pure 1337 hax0r, killing enemies without even engaging combat.
There was even build posted recently that was about remote driving bike/car and exploding it

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i had an epiphany, finally found out what's so great about this game: it absolutely peaks, it's completely unbeatable, when you don't actually play the game. no, i'm serious, listen to me. at max graphics + raytracing (fuck, i doubt there's any coming back from that) walking around is a treat, probably there's too much trash placed, randomly placed and going on, but there's an abundance of fabulous details everywhere. driving is a pleasure, especially on bike, roads are wide, traffic is enough to make the city feel alive but not a chore to drive through. set pieces are exceptional and often bring several branches.
it's just a shame the game is such shit to be interacted with, if at all. all you can do is pick up an extremely limited amount of stuff and shoot at baddies. because basically you're an undercover cop and can do only good, in the true spirit of cyberpunk.

 

[Melcar]

So a city walking simulator?

 

[gurugeorge]

i had an epiphany, finally found out what's so great about this game: it absolutely peaks, it's completely unbeatable, when you don't actually play the game. no, i'm serious, listen to me. at max graphics + raytracing (fuck, i doubt there's any coming back from that) walking around is a treat, probably there's too much trash placed, randomly placed and going on, but there's an abundance of fabulous details everywhere. driving is a pleasure, especially on bike, roads are wide, traffic is enough to make the city feel alive but not a chore to drive through. set pieces are exceptional and often bring several branches.
it's just a shame the game is such shit to be interacted with, if at all. all you can do is pick up an extremely limited amount of stuff and shoot at baddies. because basically you're an undercover cop and can do only good, in the true spirit of cyberpunk.

It's always been a huge baked-in problem imho. The little chunks of combat in the open world are fun in and of themselves, but in terms of roleplaying, it's quite odd for a cyberpunk-themed game that you're simply a merc for the NCPD a lot of the time.

Some mods have gone some way into defining the factions better, but even with that you'd need to comb all those little shard quests and things, to see which open world scenarios could be plausibly related to a faction instead of the NCPD, which would be a big task. But once you had that, then there are several new ways of integrating new quests into the game now (there's like 3 mods that enable you to make quests IIRC), if necessary.

There seem to be more mods being made using Wolvenkit these days, just from my sense of it. I suppose that's as close to a "Creation Kit" type of thing as they can get for the moment.

 

[ind33d]

i had an epiphany, finally found out what's so great about this game: it absolutely peaks, it's completely unbeatable, when you don't actually play the game. no, i'm serious, listen to me. at max graphics + raytracing (fuck, i doubt there's any coming back from that) walking around is a treat, probably there's too much trash placed, randomly placed and going on, but there's an abundance of fabulous details everywhere. driving is a pleasure, especially on bike, roads are wide, traffic is enough to make the city feel alive but not a chore to drive through. set pieces are exceptional and often bring several branches.
it's just a shame the game is such shit to be interacted with, if at all. all you can do is pick up an extremely limited amount of stuff and shoot at baddies. because basically you're an undercover cop and can do only good, in the true spirit of cyberpunk.

It's always been a huge baked-in problem imho. The little chunks of combat in the open world are fun in and of themselves, but in terms of roleplaying, it's quite odd for a cyberpunk-themed game that you're simply a merc for the NCPD a lot of the time.

Some mods have gone some way into defining the factions better, but even with that you'd need to comb all those little shard quests and things, to see which open world scenarios could be plausibly related to a faction instead of the NCPD, which would be a big task. But once you had that, then there are several new ways of integrating new quests into the game now (there's like 3 mods that enable you to make quests IIRC), if necessary.

There seem to be more mods being made using Wolvenkit these days, just from my sense of it. I suppose that's as close to a "Creation Kit" type of thing as they can get for the moment.

NCPD was clearly supposed to be one optional questline among joining various gangs but since the rest were cut the entire game is Robocop. Just so bizarre

 

[Cologno]

... at max graphics + raytracing (fuck, i doubt there's any coming back from that)...

Oh man, path tracing is a whole level, too. I get about 4 FPS looking at a wall, but makes for cool screen shots!

 

[Cologno]

- is this playable without doing any shooting? I'm not talking about non-lethal playthrough, but maybe pure melee build, is it feasible? I hate shooting in games.

Ive heard people have beaten the game just using fists and cyberware (and a few crazies probably left out cyberware altogether). There's a couple of decent iconic blades that can be had early and last most of the game. It's fun and forces you to be creative with the environment. Then there's monowire if you don't even feel like pissing around with weaponry.

My last playthrough I did a build I called "blender boy" that used just monowire and netrunning.

 

[Tacgnol]

- is this playable without doing any shooting? I'm not talking about non-lethal playthrough, but maybe pure melee build, is it feasible? I hate shooting in games.

Ive heard people have beaten the game just using fists and cyberware (and a few crazies probably left out cyberware altogether). There's a couple of decent iconic blades that can be had early and last most of the game. It's fun and forces you to be creative with the environment. Then there's monowire if you don't even feel like pissing around with weaponry.

My last playthrough I did a build I called "blender boy" that used just monowire and netrunning.

Melee is easy/just as OP as it always was.

I did a gorilla arms playthrough back in October and it blitzed through everything.

 

[Cologno]

- is this playable without doing any shooting? I'm not talking about non-lethal playthrough, but maybe pure melee build, is it feasible? I hate shooting in games.

Ive heard people have beaten the game just using fists and cyberware (and a few crazies probably left out cyberware altogether). There's a couple of decent iconic blades that can be had early and last most of the game. It's fun and forces you to be creative with the environment. Then there's monowire if you don't even feel like pissing around with weaponry.

My last playthrough I did a build I called "blender boy" that used just monowire and netrunning.

Melee is easy/just as OP as it always was.

I did a gorilla arms playthrough back in October and it blitzed through everything.

I did, too, and really the un-modded game is piss-easy to begin with. I ended up maxing difficulty to keep it interesting, and even then by lvl 35-ish it was a joke any way. Stamina management I don't think CDPR ever got quite right in this one or Witcher 3.

 

[Justicar]

Melee is easy/just as OP as it always was.

I did a gorilla arms playthrough back in October and it blitzed through everything.

or you can do this.

 

[AwesomeButton]

i had an epiphany, finally found out what's so great about this game: it absolutely peaks, it's completely unbeatable, when you don't actually play the game. no, i'm serious, listen to me. at max graphics + raytracing (fuck, i doubt there's any coming back from that) walking around is a treat, probably there's too much trash placed, randomly placed and going on, but there's an abundance of fabulous details everywhere. driving is a pleasure, especially on bike, roads are wide, traffic is enough to make the city feel alive but not a chore to drive through. set pieces are exceptional and often bring several branches.
it's just a shame the game is such shit to be interacted with, if at all. all you can do is pick up an extremely limited amount of stuff and shoot at baddies. because basically you're an undercover cop and can do only good, in the true spirit of cyberpunk.

Yes, good music (with custom soundtrack through mods) and virtual tourism make for a better experience than doing quests. Occasional gigs and gang shootouts are a fun side challenge. And you have the interactive movie aka main quest

 

[Socrates]

Just getting back into the game with a Katana build. Very enjoyable. The game is so much more smooth and stable than when I last touched it which was about a year after release.

I did, too, and really the un-modded game is piss-easy to begin with. I ended up maxing difficulty to keep it interesting, and even then by lvl 35-ish it was a joke any way. Stamina management I don't think CDPR ever got quite right in this one or Witcher 3.

My game is on hard but I'm not finding it extremely challenging as long as I'm not playing sloppy. But yeah there's a threshold with cyberware where you become so obscenely strong that even very hard difficulty can't really keep up with. Honestly, I'm fine with it though I play it more for the immersion and gameplay rather than the difficulty.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

good music (with custom soundtrack through mods)

yeah, i found the ost selection to be abysmal, so much that i'd sworn my balls off that in 1.0 my favourite station was the one who gave out news most consistently. i checked, apparently that station never existed.

 

[Gargaune]

Is there a mod to disable the random vehicle attacks? Driving around NC is annoying enough without CDPR's braindead, low-effort "activities" and of course the turd isn't even complete because they failed to include a feature to repair your car.

 

[Cologno]

Just call your car somewhere it has to respawn. Voila. It'll be pristine again.

 

[Robber Baron]

too bad there's no mod to make car damage persistent even after respawns

 

[AwesomeButton]

Is there a mod to disable the random vehicle attacks? Driving around NC is annoying enough without CDPR's braindead, low-effort "activities" and of course the turd isn't even complete because they failed to include a feature to repair your car.

There is a mod that has immersive car repair.

 

[Gargaune]

Just call your car somewhere it has to respawn. Voila. It'll be pristine again.

Since when? I distinctly remember my ride staying scratched and banged-up between summons, the only way to "repair" it was to blow it up or drop it in the river before recalling unless it's changed in recent patches.

There is a mod that has immersive car repair.

I've seen two mods with vehicle repairs [1] [2] and they're both reported buggy, won't fully restore the vehicle. Not that it's the ideal solution to the vehicle encounters themselves being dogshit drudgery, but I'd take a repair hotkey if it were working properly.

 

[gurugeorge]

Just call your car somewhere it has to respawn. Voila. It'll be pristine again.

Since when? I distinctly remember my ride staying scratched and banged-up between summons, the only way to "repair" it was to blow it up or drop it in the river before recalling unless it's changed in recent patches.

There is a mod that has immersive car repair.

I've seen two mods with vehicle repairs [1] [2] and they're both reported buggy, won't fully restore the vehicle. Not that it's the ideal solution to the vehicle encounters themselves being dogshit drudgery, but I'd take a repair hotkey if it were working properly.

Basically if you get out of your busted car and fast travel somewhere then call it again it will be repaired.