Cyberpunking it Up

I've spent some time checking out the 2.0 update for Cyberpunk 2077 and I've mostly liked what I see.  The "Phantom Liberty" DLC currently has "very positive" reviews, so now is a good time to revisit or expand your Cyberpunk experience.  Here are my impressions thus far (**for reference, that's not very far.  I've complete the heist mission and haven't touched the main story missions yet.  I've mostly been tooling around in the open world completing scanner jobs and cyberpsychos)

Like

1.) The new talent system does offer up some unique abilities (and I've barely dipped my toes into it).  I've gone for a stealth/reflex build and I've gained the ability to "dash"--a sort of high speed dodge that consumes stamina.  That doesn't seem very exciting, but it's handy for buzzing away from a melee enemy who might creep up on you unnoticed or quickly getting into cover.  I am missing the stealth abilities that offered up increased movement speed upon incapacitating an enemy.  The stealth abilities seem a bit meh (although there's a whole strand that seems to be built around throwing knives.  Throwing knives were almost totally useless in the OG game because you had to fetch them out of the bodies of enemies before you could toss more.  Maybe they're worth checking out now?)

2.) No more 5 bajillion obnoxious phone calls and messages!  Car sales have been streamlined into a website, so you won't have every fixer in Night City calling to drop the details about a new vehicle for sale.  I have yet to check out the vehicle sales website, but this is a change that I'm enjoying.

Tyger Claws V...rawr!

3.) The new wardrobe feature is amazing.  Every item of clothing you loot is automatically added, so you can sell it all and still use the appearance of the items.  It's very nice not to have to hoard a bunch of clothing in the stash so that I could play dress up with V.

4.) Every ripperdoc now sells all cyberware items.  There's no longer a need to search up which doc carries which upgrade and spend a bunch of time fast traveling all over Night City.

Dislike/Mixed Feelings

1.) Hoping to go non-lethal?  It's not much of an option anymore.  There are no more weapon mods to turn damage to non-lethal.  Overall, that's not a big deal--it's not like there's really any difference in the story/game if you opt for a lethal or non-lethal playstyle.  The place where it sucks the most though is in cyberpsycho fights.  The whole goal is to keep them alive, which in the past was simply an issue of popping on a pax mod and firing away.  Now, you have to burn them down to a low health percentage and either use the short circuit hack (which requires a lot of RAM at lower levels) or find a non-lethal melee weapon to stun them with--or I should say, sometimes stuns them and sometimes kills them.

I've struggled the most with the cyberpsycho fights this time around.  It may be that I raised the difficulty or that my stealth heavy build just isn't good for straight up fights, but the fights do seem harder now.  Cyberpsycho's 2.0 have new tactics which include freely chucking grenades at you--something that they didn't do before.  Several times I manage to whittle them down to 2-3% and then accidentally kill them by whacking them with an electric baton.  Don't be surprised if you find these fights to be more challenging (that's not necessarily a bad thing, they should be tough fights--after all, they are supposed to be chromed out psychos).

I haven't found Skippy yet, but it might be the best option for keeping things non-lethal.

2.) Vehicle combat.  I have not directly engaged in it myself, but I have been blithely standing on the street and had rival gangs go speeding past while shooting at each other.  It does give Night City more of a chaotic feel, but seems like a fairly lackluster addition.

3.) New and improved cops.  So far my experiences with the Night City cops 2.0 have been just as unimpressive as they were in the original game.  I've accidentally mowed down a few pedestrians and had the cops take notice, but avoiding attention is still basically a matter of quickly leaving the area and evading them.  I get the feeling that unless you're directly taking aim at them, there's just not much of a difference from before.  I have noticed that there are now more cops just roving about the streets, so there is an increased chance that you'll grab unwanted attention.

3.) I'm still trying to figure out the item upgrade system.  It's slightly different than before and it seems to have really detracted from upgrading iconic weapons (possibly...it's a bit hard to tell this early).  The cost of upgrading seems high compared to looting a higher tier weapon.  Upgrading quickhacks is still a bit boggling--it doesn't appear that there is a way to get more components other than 1.) doing the little cracking puzzles from jacking into certain interfaces or 2.) disassembling old or unneeded quickhacks.  I suppose you could buy components--that might be the best route.  You cannot craft quickhack components (maybe it's an intelligence related talent that I haven't come across yet?).

ADDITION (10/1/23):  I'm fairly certain that some obnoxious bugs are still present in 2.0--namely those involving iconic weapon blueprints.  I've completed two jobs (and killed/disabled the leaders who should've dropped the weapons) which should have dropped the blueprints for Psalms 11:5 and Buzzsaw...but got nada.  Of course I didn't notice until it was too late, so there's no possibility of re-loading a past save to remedy the problem.  I seriously thought they fixed this bug a few patches ago.

I'm hoping that the perks get more robust as I get into the upper tiers.  Build-wise, I'm having some regrets over not going with a melee build.  One of my favorite playthroughs was with a katana based melee build (which I thought would be ridiculous but actually turned out to be a lot of fun).  If you're checking out the 2.0 changes too, I hope you're having a dandy time.