I'll wait 6 months for them to fix it. I played for a few hours and it was boring af.

Okay so I've sunk enough hours into this game to explore some of the thoughts I have of it. Haven't completed the main storyline yet (I'm at the Hanako questline that warns you of not being able to return should you continue) so not everything I say will encapsulate every facet of the game, but I'm pretty sure I've got the gist of what it was going for.

The setting and aesthetics are great. Characters are well fleshed out and engaging. Johnny Silverhand is probably my favourite in the game. Sidequests aren't just half baked "collect a package" type set ups. They're really well conceptualised and lengthy.

Now, the critiques. Glitches and crashes notwithstanding there's a lot of really wasted potential here and just straight up missing aspects of the game that were promised.

-Lifepaths. Probably my biggest gripe. They impact absolutely fuck all except for the prologue and a select few dialogue options. What happened to "your life path isn't set in stone"? I distinctly remember being told we would get to deviate between lifepaths, i.e. Street kids can become Corpos, Nomads can become Street kids etc. Maybe I've missed some obscure questline that I haven't discovered yet but I chose street kid and I haven't once been offered the option to move up the food chain to become a Corpo or join a bunch of Nomads. The closest I came to this was the Panam questline were she offered me to join the Aldecados, but the game promptly shut down any prospect of accepting her offer, essentially just giving me a couple different ways to say "lolno".

Why isn't there a corpo questline where I can backstab my way to becoming CEO of the various corporations in the game? Why can't I become a street boss, or have my street cred actually mean something other than having a couple more options at a clothing vendor? Happy to be corrected if I'm just straight up missing a side gig but at this point in the game I thought the options would be well and truly presented to me by now.

-Gangs. Apart from the Maelstrom quest at the start of the game and that brief stint in Pacifica with the Voodo Boys, I have had absolutely fuck all interactions with any of the other gangs and I've nearly completed the main questline. They could have been removed from the game post launch and I would have absolutely no clue they were ever there. Why can't I join one of the gangs too? All they've ended up bringing to the game is a slight change in the aesthetics of different parts of the city. Sorry, but "kill a cyberpsycho that's part of X gang" isn't good enough for them to be a substantial feature of the game. Hell, fucking Skyrim gives you the option to join various different factions. At least give us a quest line for each of the gangs.

-Perks and Attributes. Apart from being able to open doors and hack computers, I'm not seeing a whole lot of gameplay usage for them. I can hack cameras but I can't hack into people's hardware, take control and cause mayhem among the ranks? Again, it just comes back to my main point of wasted potential. There's so much they could have done but they just went for the convential "gain 10% damage in melee/shooting/hacking" garbage we've seen in every other RPG.

-AI. Inexcusable, but it's already been touched upon here.

Even after all that and the bugs, I still don't consider it a bad game, I just think features that were promised or at least alluded to have not been integrated at all. Definitely seems like this game has something really special to bring, but it just can't quite stick the landing for whatever reason.

Spoiler

So I completed the game. The last mission took me like 35-40 mins in total probably. Adam Smasher was a complete pushover of a final boss. My semi rare tech AR shredded him in like 5 minutes. Honestly had more trouble with the dual welding Samurai guy in the previous segment of the game.

Was not expecting how quickly you can wrap up the main story. If you can commit to it and skip a lot of dialogue it's probably like 15 to 20 hours in total. Pretty shocking considering how meaty TW3's was.

Maybe they're saving up the meat for DLCs?

Quote from: Mordo on December 24, 2020, 05:27:04 PM

Spoiler

So I completed the game. The last mission took me like 35-40 mins in total probably. Adam Smasher was a complete pushover of a final boss. My semi rare tech AR shredded him in like 5 minutes. Honestly had more trouble with the dual welding Samurai guy in the previous segment of the game.

Was not expecting how quickly you can wrap up the main story. If you can commit to it and skip a lot of dialogue it's probably like 15 to 20 hours in total. Pretty shocking considering how meaty TW3's was.

Maybe they're saving up the meat for DLCs?

I hope so. With any luck they'll give out the first expansion for free given the absolute fuckery that ensued post release.