Harder difficulties worth playing?

[Trexler ♤]

the last time i played was back in 1.6, and everything is restructured and rebalanced, from what ive gathered melee isnt as strong as before? any idea what major stuff has changed in terms of skills and attributes now vs then? because i just started a playthrough with 3's in everything and im now lvl 4 unsure where to put points

[Dino]

I play Hard and its very easy. So much money and EQ

[Schrute_Farms_B&B]

It depends on what you prefer. I personally like me some challenge. I cant play games where I just cut trough all the enemies from start to the end. Its just something I cant enjoy, even if its such a masterpiece like Cyberpunk.

Having said that, playing Cyberpunk on very hard is only a challenge in the early/mid game as long as you get into the game mechanics and use combos or specific cyberware to boost your stats and multiply the damage dealt to enemies.
You could ofc also refuse to do that (or deliberately refuse to chrome-up) and have yourself a challenge even in the late game, but it kind of destroys the motivation to play any further. Enemies on very hard are bullet sponges and boss fights can be a real pain in the as* without using the proper skills and cyberware.

My first playtrough was heavily influenced by all those bugs and glitches (which now have mostly been fixed) to a point, that I just wanted to finish the game and be done with it, so I just rushed trough the main story and refused to get into detail regarding cyberware, stats and skills so I got my as* kicked on very hard by almost every enemy.

So its up to you, how you want to play this game. If you understand the game mechanics and how you can use skills, cyberware and combos to your adventage, go for it on the highest difficulty. If not, just enjoy the game the way you want to do it.

edit: You could also use mods like HARDCORE22V2[www.nexusmods.com] or Enemies of Night City[www.nexusmods.com] to enhance combat and make it more challenging on very hard, but it still feels too easy once youve mastered you char.
I personally use damage scaling mods to double enemies and bosses health and decrease the damage I deal to them.

[Big Black]

I only play on the hardest difficulty to actually have a challenge for the first half of the game. Once you near level 30/40, it all becomes too easy

[Lord Freedom]

I did my first playthrough on Very Hard, took me 100 hours to beat the story with still a lot of side content left over. I'm level 43 now though, and basically just walking death incarnate. I ran through 9 militech guys the other day in one swift motion with my sword, look behind me to see nothing but body parts littering the street, I took no damage whatsoever. I lol'd at how ridiculous it's all becoming.

[-|Nur|-]

Not really. When the game was released I played it on Very Hard and it was easy but the
enemies were annoyingly spongy. I'm now replaying the game for the first time since release and am enjoying it a lot more on Hard because the enemies aren't such sponges. The game doesn't really feel any easier though, just less tedious.

[HellSlayer]

Its imbalanaced. at level 1 very hard difficulty is like skyrim legendary..

And you know the values in skyrim difficulty... mobs deal 5x damage and are 5x hp sponges. So they one shot you until you level up a bit.

Best difficulty would be normal from level 1 to level 5, then hard: lvl5-15.. and then very hard from level 15.

[Koumori]

Originally posted by Schrute_Farms_B&B:

[...] playing Cyberpunk on very hard is only a challenge in the early/mid game as long as you get into the game mechanics and use combos or specific cyberware to boost your stats and multiply the damage dealt to enemies.

Originally posted by Big Black:

I only play on the hardest difficulty to actually have a challenge for the first half of the game. Once you near level 30/40, it all becomes too easy

Agreed; the only time there's any challenge in this game whatsoever is in the early levels with the difficulty set to Very Hard.

Anyway, I suggest investing at least 15 points into tech regardless of what build you're running; cyberware massively influences your character and any build will benefit from having more/better cyberware. As a general rule of thumb, I'd also recommend at least 15 body; sneaky-beaky assassin builds can maybe get away with dumping body, but everyone else will want that extra tankiness. Even stealthy netrunners benefit from the extra health/health regen to use with overclock! Other than that, your choice of attributes really just comes down to how you want to play the game:

• Body: shotguns, machine guns, blunt melee, wading into the middle of combat.
  
• Reflexes: assault rifles, submachine guns, long blades, dashing around in combat, slowing time.
  
• Technical Ability: grenades/explosives, tech guns (charge before firing, shoot through walls), using healing items, maximizing your cyberware.
  
• Intelligence: hacking enemies and objects, smart guns (lock on for homing effect). The monowire "whip" is also technically an intelligence weapon, but the perks for it are more focused on using it to improve your hacking ability rather than improving the monowire itself.
  
• Cool: sniper/precision rifles, pistols/revolvers, short blades (throwable), stealth, hitting weak points (i.e. headshots, typically).

I know you played 1.6 back in the day, so sorry if any of that was patronizing. Just wanted to be thorough!

[Trexler ♤]

Originally posted by Koumori:

Originally posted by Schrute_Farms_B&B:

[...] playing Cyberpunk on very hard is only a challenge in the early/mid game as long as you get into the game mechanics and use combos or specific cyberware to boost your stats and multiply the damage dealt to enemies.

Originally posted by Big Black:

I only play on the hardest difficulty to actually have a challenge for the first half of the game. Once you near level 30/40, it all becomes too easy

Agreed; the only time there's any challenge in this game whatsoever is in the early levels with the difficulty set to Very Hard.

Anyway, I suggest investing at least 15 points into tech regardless of what build you're running; cyberware massively influences your character and any build will benefit from having more/better cyberware. As a general rule of thumb, I'd also recommend at least 15 body; sneaky-beaky assassin builds can maybe get away with dumping body, but everyone else will want that extra tankiness. Even stealthy netrunners benefit from the extra health/health regen to use with overclock! Other than that, your choice of attributes really just comes down to how you want to play the game:

• Body: shotguns, machine guns, blunt melee, wading into the middle of combat.
  
• Reflexes: assault rifles, submachine guns, long blades, dashing around in combat, slowing time.
  
• Technical Ability: grenades/explosives, tech guns (charge before firing, shoot through walls), using healing items, maximizing your cyberware.
  
• Intelligence: hacking enemies and objects, smart guns (lock on for homing effect). The monowire "whip" is also technically an intelligence weapon, but the perks for it are more focused on using it to improve your hacking ability rather than improving the monowire itself.
  
• Cool: sniper/precision rifles, pistols/revolvers, short blades (throwable), stealth, hitting weak points (i.e. headshots, typically).

I know you played 1.6 back in the day, so sorry if any of that was patronizing. Just wanted to be thorough!

wait, if i require 15 body and 15 tech, how much does that leave me for other attributes? it used to be that in 1.6 id get 20 cool, 20 reflexes and whatever else i wanted and thats it. is it alot more nuanced now?

[tbloyzz]

Isn´t it that the game was receiving a total overhaul with the release of PL? Like a different perk system, clothing no longer provided bonus, introduction of the relic skill tree, max level raise to 60?

[Koumori]

Originally posted by Trexler ♤:

wait, if i require 15 body and 15 tech, how much does that leave me for other attributes? it used to be that in 1.6 id get 20 cool, 20 reflexes and whatever else i wanted and thats it. is it alot more nuanced now?

It leaves you with 51 points, counting the 3 you start with in each attribute. You could have 15 body + 15 tech and still have enough left over for 20 cool + 20 reflexes (and 11 intelligence).

[vonMoo]

AFAIK, you can change the difficulty. Not quite on the fly, IIRC it changes from a previous checkpoint, but you could try messing around and seeing what you like. The best difficulty is what you enjoy the most.

Generally, the harder the difficulty, the rougher the start, and the worse the game punishes you if you make a mistake.

Edited, for horrible typos.

[Nar!]

Yeah the difficulty does drop off once you're fully chromed up and carrying high tier weapons.

I nerf my builds on very hard. I mainly work only with pistols, smgs and sniper rifles. I never touch sandevistan or berserk metas. Not that there's anything wrong with them, but it makes the game too easy for me. :<

I don't use combat hacks either, except short circuit for minotaurs. Mainly work with control hacks. I have the most fun this way and I'm very killable lol. :)

[SunDriedSheet]

I finished my 1st playthrough on VH and been playing VH ever since. I found only 2 things challenging. These melee/skull/dashing enemies right at the start (usually with mantis blades) can be rough to deal with as you can't outrun them and your best weapon is usually something like tier 1 pistol that barely does anything. And then it's Smasher if you go for the "Don't fear the reaper" ending as even his fart will one-shot you due to max hp cap drop.

[Pocket Dog]

The game becomes quite easy, for the most part, on any difficulty once you reach level 30+. Well, even sooner if playing on lower difficulties.

One of the issues with the game is that CDPR gives the player a bit too many attribute points, which allows one to specialize while simultaneously and paradoxically being very versatile. So, one can max out three attributes, raise another to 15, and leave the last at 6. This allows for incredibly powerful and varied builds. To make matters worse, one doesn't even need to raise an attribute to 20 to be a god; 15 is high enough for many attributes, depending on build. You could instead raise three attributes to 15, one to 16, and the last to 20. That would allow one to do most things at a very high level. Want to be a knife thrower who netruns, wields bashing weapons, possesses a lot of Tech bonuses to cybernetics and stealths around? No problem.

[yahboi1988]

By the end of the game if you built you character right you should be OP no matter the difficulty. But the final boss is really only "Him" on Very hard.