The Definition of Insanity

Unsurprisingly, my Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 adventures are continuing.  What can I say, it's a big game and I like to play one thing at a time.  My V has become a regular stealth powerhouse and I'm digging the talent path that I've chosen.

Last week I expressed some disappointment in the fact that it seemed like the stealth talents that added in movement bonuses were gone.  That was wrong, and in fact, there are several different movement bonus oriented talents that unlock with points in cool.  Best of all...there's a new "stealth sprint" ability that is pretty awesome.  And, the best part, it works in concert with optical camo!  Sneaking around has gotten so much better with the ability to quickly and invisibly buzz past a problem area and set up a plan to choke out a bunch of bozos.

Slightly less harcore V.  (with cursor because I used the wrong screenshot key)

Beside all my stealth talents, I've spread out the remainder of my point in a few areas.  Reflex talents are nice for those time when you can't avoid a straight up fight--mostly for boss fights and cyberpsychos (although I did still manage to stealth takedown one psycho).  If you want to utilize a decent amount of cyberware, the ability to expand your number of slots is tied to the technical skills tree.  Point in intelligence aren't usually wasted either--especially if you want to do some light hacking.  My only concern is that I may have spread my points out a bit too much, but I haven't had any problems so far.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over...right?  As I was playing, I noticed that I was following my normal pattern of working on side content first and then saving the story missions until later.  One of the things that I dislike (and it's a very petty and silly thing) is the fact that for some missions a specific amount of time needs to pass before you get a call and the mission triggers.  Could I do the simple thing and just "wait" for an amount of time?  Why, yes...yes, I could.  But I refuse!  I don't like to wait and I would rather that my gameplay flows together--I hate the entire concept of "waiting."  My ideal play state is completing side content while I wait for the main missions to trigger with no waiting.  It's dumb, I know.  So, this time around, I'm completing the main story missions first and saving the side stuff for later.

I haven't purchased Phantom Liberty yet, but there do seem to be some tie-ins in the form of new side content.  While completing scanner gigs and side missions in Watson I encountered a new gig that involves rescuing a wounded merc from a safehouse that has been swarmed by Militech goons.  The dude is called "Tiny Mike" and I got the impression that he's somehow attached to part of the new DLC.  He seems cool and rescuing him was a cinch.

Initially I was a bit perplexed by the crafting and upgrade system, but it seems pretty straightforward.  Iconic weapons start at a specific tier and can be upgraded to the next tier with a significant number of tier components.  The confusing part is the fact that they added in a sort of half tier that might make a weapon "tier 3+."  It's fairly expensive (component wise) to upgrade iconic weapons, so I'm trying to be selective by only improving my favorites.

Sadly, my venture into the world of "very hard" difficulty has come to an end.  Most of the scanner missions and gigs are a piece of cake, it's the story missions where the difficulty becomes an issue.  It surprised me in a strange place...the mission with Panam where you sabotage the power station.  Four drones pop out and you have to use the roof turret on Panam's rig to quickly shoot them down.  Those stupid drones were wasting me in like 2 seconds flat!  After attempting it about 25 times I decided that it just wasn't worth the pain (there's no achievement for completing it on "very hard" and I mostly just wanted to see how much harder it actually is).  I turned down the difficulty and the turned it back up--only to shortly encounter the Oda fight and find myself in the same predicament.  Maybe my idea to do the story missions first wasn't so great.

Happy Cyberpunk-ing to everyone out there checking out 2.0!  (Or if you're lucky enough to be playing Phantom Liberty)