this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2026
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Cyberpunk 2077
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What I struggle with with the game is that it's meant to be punk. It's easy to die. A dude with a gun can kill no matter who you are.
Instead, you're an invincible death/hacking machine. You can mow through mooks in a way that should completely and utterly reshape the whole criminal underworld, but instead, is treated as if it's just any other day.
The power levels are wrong for the aesthetics of the setting
You're not wrong, but that's kind of a plot hole intrinsic to virtually all video games with combat.
In real life, if you go around getting in life-and-death conflicts with people, you are very likely to be killed before long.
Problem is that most games with combat want to let the player kill more than a handful of people, or there wouldn't be much gameplay involving combat.
The ways around stuff like that, if you want to avoid unrealistic survival, requires some pretty elaborate gymnastics or constraints, like "the game can't follow a single character", "the game involves a lot of reloading", or "the main character has some sort of magic ability to reconstitute themselves".
Essentially all video games with combat also don't treat wounds realistically either. You get hit by a bullet or two from a rifle, you probably aren't going to be running around in more-or-less okay shape continuing to fight as normal.
But, I mean...there are the constraints placed on the developers of what's fun to play. Realistic simulations don't necessarily make for good gameplay.
They can still definitely be fun, but they also tend to be hard af. Sifu is a good example, get clobbered by a bottle, lose 3/4 of your health.
Sifu is notably very clever though, in that... the game expects you to fail, and that's woven into the core game itself.
Failure comes with benefits and drawbacks, the playstyle of the game itself changes.
Most people who make video games that are just brutally difficult... are not this clever.
Not if they're turn based :P
Heheh, you have not played many milsims or tactical shooters, I guess?
I'm always modding Cyberpunk ... as close to being one of those as it can be.
I agree that the vast majority of shooters play by 'arcady' damage rules and mechanics... but there is a solid nichr of people who really do just love the suck.
If you don't want a power fantasy:
Play on a harder difficulty level, turn off aim assist, change the recoil to affect 'on camera' not 'on weapon'.
And/or turn off every element of the HUD, or maybe just leave a few parts for yourself. No more threat indicator noises/sounds, no more minimap, no more hit confirmation, no more knowing how much damage you're doing.
Not a panacea, there are still, imo, flaws with how the power scaling works, but those would take mods to address.
But yeah, try playing through on Very Hard, might feel a bit less like you're a overpowered super merc.
That causes different issues.
It's cyberpunk. You're meant to have aim assist, hit confirmation, damage estimators etc. You're cybered, you're half machine, and losing your humanity to the machine to get those advantages is a core part of the setting aesthetic. Or alternatively, you don't get cyber, and you don't lose yourself to the machine, but then you struggle to survive when dealing with those who have. You see this play out in extremes in the cyberpsycho story arcs.
A cybered up merc is meant to be a small shark in an ocean of piranhas. An ocean where there are larger sharks, but also killer whales. A cybered up merc is meant to be a threat to most people on the street. But a gang of partly and non cybered folk should be a threat to the merc too. Maybe a merc could get lucky and tear up a gang by themself, but it would leave a power vacuum, and disturb a lot of people who had deals with that gang. It would be a story in and of itself. And any merc that kept killing wiping out entire gangs would eventually take a wrong step, and end up dead, or if they were good enough to not get killed by the gangs, they'd find themselves with a bullet in the back of the head, being put down by the corps who rely on the status quo in the streets to make their money.
The point being, the cyberpunk setting itself is not designed to be home to mass slice and dice combat. The slicers and dicers are the people who have lost themselves to the machine completely, the psychos that need to be put down.
tl;dr - Changing the difficulty wouldn't resolve my main issue with the game
Those solutions just make it more challenging to have fun instead of more challenging.
Elden Ring is a game where the enemy power levels are through the roof and its still fun as hell to lose over and over. That's because the gameplay itself is great and it feels great to play.
I agree. I always use mods that balance the difficulty for this very reason.