23 people found this review helpful
Not Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 29.7 hrs on record
Posted: 19 Mar, 2021 @ 7:43pm
Updated: 19 Mar, 2021 @ 7:44pm

It's Starcrawlers, but Cyberpunk.

And without the charm, the enemy variety, the plot, the character building, the consistent theme...

It's kind of a mess because the concept is neat, and the game makes a strong impression at the start. But then it falls off hard when you find there are only six locations and you will see all the enemies you're ever going to see on the first visit. Your agents gain levels, but the bonuses are very minor and don't make the agent much stronger; most of your power comes from your gear and skills. And the skills can be numerically improved but the ones you start the game with are all you get. Since there's so very little plot (and the plot missions are basically just normal missions) you'll see all the content in the game early.

...which wouldn't be so bad... except that even if you complete the game's central objective of "kill all the corp bosses", you still have to play out 75 weeks of the game to finish it up. Screw that.

It's also got some major balance problems. A lot of the bonuses you can get are irrelevantly small; +2% HP (when your base is 50-ish. Oh boy, one hit point!), or +2% damage, for example. But on the other end of the scale you can, quite easily, push an agent to a 100% crit rate very, very early on in the game, and then just curbstomp everything you come across. If you take the soldier (who can recharge shields), the infiltrator (for damage), and any sort of support character, you're basically invincible and combats are over almost as soon as they begin. And you can ignore all the defensive upgrades and just take the "If you have X% of your battery left, get 50% damage reduction" upgrades to make things even less of a threat.

All the game's written lore comes in 20 'echoes' that serve as a money sink and, all added together, make up about one single note's worth of lore from most other games.

In summary, great concept, but incredibly disappointing once you get past the beginning.

Special mention to the drone that follows you around and makes witty remarks that get old very quickly. It's completely out of place in the tone of an otherwise very serious Cyberpunk game and has a pool of lines way too small for the number of times you'll hear it speak. But the devs must have known, because they gave the drone's voice its very own volume slider.
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