Six months later, Cyberpunk 2077’s most egregious problem remains

I’ve been diving into Cyberpunk 2077 a bit lately, with the game back in the news after restoring it to PlayStation Store. While I beat the game on Xbox Series X a long time ago, I have half-finished games on two different Vs on PC because I was waiting for some big changes to come back to them.

I’m still waiting.

But over the past six months, with CDPR so focused on bug fixing, performance and nothing else, I would say that a core game issue remains the most pressing issue after all this time, and nothing has happened. ‘was made for changes on.

The difficulty.

Usually when a game reporter complains about the difficulty of the game, something is too difficult. But in the case of Cyberpunk 2077, it’s the opposite. The game is far, far too easy, even in the most difficult difficulty levels, and with just a shallow amount of skills, weapons, and cyberware, the game can become a cinch depending on your style of playing. game, very early. And it never gets difficult again.

Nothing about the difficulty, in terms of actual balance or enemy AI, has changed since launch.

By far the easiest way to navigate the game is to follow the hack path, where a short way up this tree, with just one cyberware upgrade or two, you can kill an entire building of enemies by contagion. or overload or suicide hacks. Difficulty doesn’t come into the equation at all here because you don’t use any weapons, and unless you’re careless, you don’t even get shot. Hell, you could run all this build naked if you wanted to.

Next is the melee, the main version I chose for the X series, which allowed me to beat the game with ease, avoiding damage and beheading everyone, even most of the bosses, with my Katana. And again, this isn’t some super-crazy endgame build, it started happening around level 20 of 50, and the game was never difficult again.

Probably the most “difficult” way to play Cyberpunk is to follow a traditional gunslinger / assault path, as it will take the longest to create enough upgrades to withstand extended firefights on maximum difficulty. But even here, you’ll soon find versions that involve auto-searching smart bullets, x-ray sniper rifles, or single-shot magnums that make everything easier.

Although I agree that of course at level 50 with max Cyberware you should being able to rule the world in terms of wild DPS and abilities that make the game a cinch even at difficult levels the problem is that it is so most of the game feels with any targeted build from a distance. And for late-game players who would have like to see some kind of challenge, there just isn’t one.

Part of that is AI. Enemy AI in Cyberpunk is extremely dumb, so most fights are less than a tactical puzzle game. But a lot of it is damage values. You can treat just one absurd amount of damage with most builds early on, and shooting every enemy with every encounter just isn’t very convincing gameplay.

Piracy? Hacking is its own problem, and while clearing buildings in a few hacks is it fun the first 10 times, the next 200 times? Not so much, and I don’t even know how they could begin to balance that style of play. Not that they tried.

I talked a lot about the difficulty when Cyberpunk first launched, but while this is one of the more obvious gameplay issues, it just hasn’t been addressed. at all within six months. Maybe this free DLC will come with a higher difficulty level than what we currently have, but if it has something like New Game Plus without that, that would be frankly absurd, given the problem of balance in the first part, even less that where the players start suitable for teeth.

I know Cyberpunk has a lot of issues, but I think this one shouldn’t be overlooked if CDPR is really trying to “fix” the game in the longer term.

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