Overall feedback and bug report

[Xupinto]

The game is good, but surely is too raw yet.
I'm a big fan of this series, played a lot the first one and was eager to play the second one.
The problem is that, although a lot of concepts were improved from the last game, some has gotten worse.

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I've accumulated 108 hours playing this game, so I'll try to list my thoughts here:

Graphics [7/10]

I didn't see any noticeable improvements on game graphics since the first game, but honestly...I couldn't care less for graphics. So this is far from being an important point.

Story [5/10]

This one is kinda frustrating. Because you can see that the devs were trying to deliver a good and immersive experience with this story line, but...nah. The story line can be summarized into a repeating process of: speak with an area influencer, hand him/her some of your goods and start selling stuff in that area. The story only move out from this repetitive lore when you get to mess with the Mexican cartel. But that's actually the worst part of the game (I'll get to that).

Gameplay[6/10]

I'm not saying that the gameplay is ♥♥♥♥, but it could certainly be way better. You see, in the previous game, you didn't have the option to fight against anyone. But in this one you have to fight quite a lot throughout the game, and the fighting mechanics...oh boy...those are terrible. IMO, first person viewed games that has melee combat tend to be finicky or messy, even in the best games that have it. But in this game...it's reeeeally bad.
Some other mechanics that I consider good, are badly implemented, such as the stamina one. In a few words, you have to deal with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ stamina throughout the entire game and there's nothing you can do to make it good. The game does offer a good way to improve your stats by changing your clothes (which I think is a great way to do so), but this was surely not well thought when they planned the game design on this. A lot of balancing is needed in this feature.

Bugs[5/10]

I'll give it a 5 out of ten because even though the game has a lot of bugs, I've managed to play it for 108 hours, so it's surely not unplayable. But that doesn't mean you won't find game breaking bugs...because you will.
The worst of them that I found until now, is a bug where you put too many machines to produce drugs at once. If you do this, you'll get an error about some memory issue. I have a 3070, along with 32gb of RAM...it shouldn't have this kind of problem. And I wasn't even pushing that much. I had about 40 machines working simultaneously, but if I tried to get more...around 50 machines...I get the error. So I needed to wait for those machines to finish, so I could turn the other ones on. Very frustrating.
Besides that, we have all types of bugs: translation bugs all over the place, being treated as a Person of Interest even though you've already lost the status, clients spawning inside structures that you can't go inside, random crashes here and there, crashes due to moving too fast with boats when sprinting, missions that pops multiple times when that matter was already solved, being unable to move when I fast travel and land on top of patrolling militias. Well...all that is kinda expected from an early access game that got launched so recently, but we must report it so the devs can fix them.

Mechanics [4/10]

*stretches fingers*
Now let's talk about this.

Once again, the game design team has a lot of work to be done in here. Most of the mechanics implemented in the game are fun and great ideas...but the way they got implemented made them boring and repetitive. I'll explain myself.

Stamina and Weight mechanics:

Like I said previously, the balancing of stamina usage/regeneration is bad. I got to endgame and still had a very hard time running long distances and having to walk slowly, waiting for my stamina to regenerate. Usually, I would suggest to not even include this stamina mechanic, because most of the times it just makes the game boring. But since this is a game where you see yourself running from milicia a lot of times, having a limited stamina is a good challenge. But you must have someway to overcome this challenge along the game progress.

Foods and Substances usage:

Right now, it feels just pointless to me. We don't have a clear indication of what the foods or substances does to you. And honestly, I've tried to use them anyway, but couldn't see any noticeable difference. Even in the previous game you could benefit from using substances to gain vigor or night vision. But on this one...honestly, I don't see the point of using anything.

Game progression:

I feel the game progression is quite messy right now. I wouldn't make the player start the game having to plant cannabis already. Make it a little bit slower, like the previous game. You have someone that sells the ganja to you, and only then you start planting your own herb and selling it.
Planting sativa is another pointless thing to me. Endgame I had 6 indica planting racks, and produced more weed than I could sell, with maxed demand in all sectors, and since the clients doesn't make a difference between indica or sativa...I just never dealt with sativa. Cocaine came too late into the game, so late that by the time I've managed to buy the cocaine operation, I was already making enough money to buy almost anything. I couldn't buy the most expensive Villas or Boats, but honestly...what's the point? What would I use these boats for when I have my moped and can fast travel along all the map?
I think it is a good idea to liberate the parking fast travels only when you get lvl 2 of reputation in that area, but it is too easy to do so currently. It should be harder to get reputation lvl 2, but it should be easier to move without the need to use fast travels. Fast travels should be endgame feature, because they remove a lot of the challenge of facing the militia or bandits.

Drugs cutting:

Well. There is none, right? This was a core feature of the previous game, and it was awesome. Why remove it?

Employees:

Great mechanic, but why limit it so much? We have a very limited number of employees that we can hire, and sometimes we have way more clients than we can handle, like in Slavs Bay for example. I have tons of clients there waiting to be answered, but have no more employees to handle them. I could buy more hideouts and hire more distributors to handle these new clients (which is a great reason to buy more hideouts, I liked that), but there's no employees. I ask the influencers, check the boards...but after sometime...it just stops giving you any employees. So if I can't have more employees, I won't buy anymore hideouts, won't grow my client basis, won't make more profit. Selling drugs actively should be an early game mechanic only. After some time, it gets boring and repetitive.

Militia Raids and Visibility level:

Militia raids are great. I find it awesome that you can be in your base chilling, thinking that you're safe, and then you just hear the chopper coming...you'll have like 8 seconds to evade. Super cool this feature. But once you get used to it, you just know that whenever you have any visibility level (depending on your hideout visibility, even Person of Interest can trigger the raid) high enough, you can just go to another empty hideout, so if they raid you, you won't lose anything. Or even better...don't go to any hideout during the status countdown. Wait it somewhere hidden from the militia and that's fine, since you won't get caught, won't be followed for too long (every agressive NPC give up on the pursuit after a few meters) and won't lose anything.

Hideout Management:

Here's the most frustrating part of this game for me. You have a ton of machine types to do all sorts of drugs or substances. But a lot of those equipment can be used to work with multiple substances, and some equipment are just bad. Okay, they might be cheaper, but not cheaper enough for me to choose buying them in place of saving one more day to buy the better one. You can't even sell the equipment you won't use anymore...so there's really no point in buying low tier equipment when you have better ones available.

Vehicles:

The moped does it all. It is literally all that you need. Buying a car doesn't make sense due to the amount of gas it consumes. It's preferable to make 2 or 3 trips in the moped, than to use the car's inventory. And don't even get me started on boats. I've only used them to get to places I couldn't get by walking, which occurred to me 3 or 4 times maximum. There should be permanent militia blockades between sectors to motivate the usage of boats more often. Also, fast travel shouldn't be "worldwide" if you're on a car/motorcycle. Some places don't even have a bridge, but you can fast travel with the moped.

Power/water consumption:

As far as I saw, no matter how much power you spend, the bills will never surpass the profit from selling your stuff. So, why should I bother at all with power usage?
Water is even worse. I'll need water only in my labs, and if I never buy a hideout that has no water available, I'll never have to deal with this. So...really didn't get the point of these mechanics.

Buses:

Man, these things are quite useless. Their itinerary never benefits the player. You should be able to get a bus in a bus stop, and jump out in any other bus stop in the map...but that's certainly not how it works. Some bus stops can just take you to other specific bus stops...and it's never really clear how it works...because once I thought the circulation was enclosed inside each area, but there are bus stops that doesn't connect to other bus stops in the same area. Well...messy.

Street respect:

Another cool mechanic that was poorly balanced. I have maximum street respect, which gives me 90% chance of intimidation against any thugs that tries to rob me. Thing is: it was too easy to get this street respect. It should be harder. Another thing is: if I have max street respect...why those thugs are trying to rob me anyway? I should actually be respected, not assaulted.

Drug production:

First thing: producing AMP is A PAIN IN THE ***. Oh my god, why am I forced throughout the entire game to buy so few phenylethylamine each day, in the worst spot in the map to get to...EVERY SINGLE DAY. Oh my god man. This is so frustrating. Then, you can get the recipe to produce this, but you'll need chocolate and cocoa powder. Chocolate is so rare, and gives so little Phenyl...that it's not even worth it. Cocoa has an insane stack, where you can stack only 2 packs of 500g. So you go buy a lot of it, and you have to make several trips to buy it all...to get not that much of Phenyl as result. Man...seriously...fix this.
Another point is: there should be a way to automate drug production. When I become a drug lord, I don't want to be dealing with tons of electric pots, cooking 20g of Opium each, repeating this ♥♥♥♥ along 30 pots so I can get my 2kg Opium. Dude, make an employee do this job. Why can't we do that? All an endgame player would have to worry about is politics...negotiating percentages with other people, making sure that his labs have enough resources to produce goods, gathering more clients, and using the money to have fun buying Yachts, mansions, buying furniture and decorating.

Influencers participation rates:

Another good idea that's quite shallow right now. I get the minimum share percentage quite early in the game. It's too easy. I just need to get respect and dress good...and bam. It's done. No minigames, no persuasion, no negotiation...just that. It could be better, and should be an endgame focused gameplay. Rates could vary depending on your performance in the area. You should lose respect if you don't answer your client's messages, and by losing respect, the influencer would start raising his rates to compensate the loss. Well, I don't want to start brainstorming ideas for the game here...but we certainly have a lot of better options for the game then those we have in place today.

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Well, after writing this bible, I'll leave this feedback wishing the best to this game. I recommended it positively, because I truly believe in this project. Can't wait to see how this game will look like in 1 year or 2.