I wasn't planning on getting it, but early Christmas stuff made it possible, so I said what the hell and grabbed it. I honestly had paid ZERO attention to everything for most of its development. I figured I'd either be interested or I wouldn't. Turns out I was.
Thoughts on GameplayIt's not earth-shattering. It's kind of everything you've ever seen in a game before, just done in a stylish and vivid environment that's tons of fun to just be in. It's pretty much just ... what if we took some structural and storytelling stuff from Witcher 3, stuck everything in a big GTA city, and then gave you a lot of Deus Ex/System Shock-feeling systems to play with.
I've read and listened to a lot of criticism, most of which I don't understand. The story has been interesting so far, I've done about equal parts story and side stuff and just got into Act 2 at about 21 hours. Some of the side stuff is very typical of open-world games. Hey, there's a pack of bad dudes over there represented by a map icon, you should go shoot them to death. Other stuff is questy, go find this person and help them out, kill these guys and bring their stuff somewhere, infiltrate a facility, steal something, investigate something, etc. It's an RPG, not a shooter, so enemies are bullet sponges and your gear is all stat-based, but the gunplay doesn't feel bad at all. Stealth stuff is pretty standard, but made a lot more fun in combo with the hacking/scanning stuff. Scan things and hack into them, mark dudes so you can see them through walls, plan your way around and try to knock everyone out without giving away your position.
But anyone who was expecting a huge evolution in stuff you've already played, you won't really find it here. Nothing it does is poor so far as I've been able to tell, but also nothing is hugely groundbreaking.
The WorldWhat's really awesome are the little details. During an early conversation you're talking to a guy, and he's eating noodles. He takes bites with his chopsticks while you're talking, and you can see him chew, then when you're about to stop and he's getting ready to respond, you can physically see him swallow in time to speak. There are lots of little natural touches like that in the game that just make it feel special compared to a lot of other things.
But it's gamey. You can't interact with every shop owner, and a ton of them sell the same kinds of generalized junk rather than even specific kinds of food. Disappointing, since most of the food gives you the same stat boosts, and a lot of shops are themed around like various Asian foods or whatever, but you still just get the same general inventory rather than dishes that even look like anything on the shop's counter. So it misses in some of those little details too, perhaps an inevitability for a game this huge. It didn't matter in Witcher 3, and it doesn't
really matter here either, except that you're in a recognizable and multicultural sci-fi world that should reasonably have many different kinds of cuisine.
So the details are hit and miss, but when they hit, they're just lovely. I've spent a lot of time just slowly walking around and gawking at stuff. You definitely can do that here, and different neighborhoods are pretty distinct and feel different, though of course there's plenty of repetition as well.
Yakuza 0 impressed me a lot more in how little it repeated itself, though to be fair, that is a
vastly smaller game that also didn't have to create every last piece of its advertising from scratch (it had some real-world franchises).
The characters have been fantastic so far, as far as the story. I've heard some folks express a little disappointment (notably Jeff from Giant Bomb, who really does just seem to hate everything these days), but the conversations have felt meaningful and weighty to me, and my choices all felt like they had the potential to be meaningful. How many of them ultimately were it's hard to say, but I was able to glimpse at least some of that potential for directed choice here and there.
I'm playing on the hardest difficulty, because of course I am, so I really bonded with the characters I fought alongside. Everything had weight and felt like it mattered, and the ordeals felt like real ordeals. I imagine that has a lot to do with the fact that I felt a lot more for the characters than some people. We got through a lot together in those early hours. But they're expressive and fun, and the acting has all been good. Writing has been pretty decent too, despite Jeff's misgivings. I don't understand any of his complaints there.
But I should stress this:
play this game on the hardest difficult you can manage. Not every game needs that, but it's important here, just as it was for the Witcher games. Jeff's big criticism was that he never felt like he needed to interface with any of the game's systems, and that's because he's playing on normal, as most youtubers and reviewers do. If you want to NEED those systems, bump up the difficulty. You can change it in the menu at any time, so it isn't a big deal you're committed to forever. I honestly haven't found the hardest difficulty that hard, but it does necessitate playing smart and having a plan, and
that's where this game can shine in the gameplay department. And it really helps you feel more connected to the events of the story, I think.
The BadSadly, it's not all good. There are a few bad points that need to be pointed out.
Mouse acceleration can't be turned off. Lame.
Can't rebind every control, which is irritating. The F key in particular is used to confirm things and can't be rebound in the game, which fucks with my ESDF scheme. I rebound stuff in an XML file in a directory, and that does actually work, but it's kind of a pain in the ass. I ended up just using a controller since this isn't a twitch shooter like Doom, and it's been fine. These are legitimate issues I hope they iron out, especially since there's really no reason they should be there. And my guess is they'll be fixed in future patches. Just be warned if that matters to you now.
The BugsAh yes, the bugs. Well, honestly, I haven't experienced many. I haven't had a single crash, nor anything that impeded my progress in any quests. In 21 hours of play, I've hit 7 bugs, and a third of those were "there's a random item floating in the air, that's weird" instances, some of the rest were texture errors (billboard ads not loading in right, some lighting/texture issues with them, etc.), a couple instances where I sort of bounced or flew too far when walking on objects the game's physics couldn't seem to quite grapple with (but nothing crazy), and a single instance where a here's-some-bad-guys-to-shoot event on the map didn't have the AI spawn, so the enemies just stood around. I just walked away from it and figured I'd come back later.
It's been a remarkably stable experience for me, and while some of the texture work is really low-res (on some objects and ads), there has been little enough to pull me out of the experience otherwise. I'm surprised. I was expecting
much worse.
The PerformanceI'm not a PC elitist who needs 120 FPS, and I don't give a flying fuck about 4k or anything else. My PC is on the old side, an Intel Core i7-5820K with 16GB of RAM and a Radeon R9 390. I'm playing the game on a mix of ultra, high, and medium settings, and it's running at a reasonable stable 30-ish. Certainly not what some people will want out of it, but it's totally playable, still looks beautiful, and I haven't really felt any need to fuck with it since I first messed with the settings. For people with newer rigs it will undoubtedly perform better, though I'm sure there are going to be hardware-specific performance issues with it.
The Verdict (so far)Having a blast! I love the game, but I can see how people would be disappointed if they'd really internalized all the hype. Nothing here you haven't seen before, but it's still a great open-world RPG in a killer setting with gorgeous visuals, an absorbing atmosphere, and some fantastic characters. It will undoubtedly end up being controversial, both for some unfortunate dog-whistle stuff that snuck into some text (though there's also some legit social commentary), for its body-forward cyberpunk vision with lots of sex and nudity (familiar to anyone who's ever watched or read any sort of cyberpunk anything ever), and for just plain being a game instead of the future cyberpunk simulation that I know some people wanted it to be. And of course ... the bugs and performance stuff that some people will have to deal with.
But I stand by my statement from before. It will take another 6 months, but once they iron out the kinks, this will be GOTY for many people. I can't speak to the end of the story, but I'm really enjoying what I've seen so far, and while the side content has not been quite as absorbing as the stuff in Witcher 3, the game is more fast-paced generally, so to some degree that's to be expected. There's still potential for a lot of good stuff, and I know that side content does open up new ways to end the game. I'm really eager to get back to exploring the world. I honestly just can't put it down.
Here are a few random images I've taken using the photo mode. It reflects my midrange settings (which I still think look spectacular, especially in motion).
