Took this game from a guilty pleasure to personal favorite.

As much as I loved playing Cyberpunk through the 1.X patches, the gameplay was definitely one of the biggest problems I had with it.

In 1.X it had a more Diablo/MMO esq gearing system, so every weapon and piece of clothing had randomly generated stats. Meaning there was no attachment to your guns or clothing as you would just have to ditch them about 5 minutes later when you get something else with better stats. Iconic special weapons that would complement your build would regularly get outclassed by trash you found on the side of the street, and trying to keep a consistent clothing style? Not happening unless you want to be made of paper.

Now, all guns of the same type have the same stats with small differences in damage and the like depending on what its rarity is, meaning the Iconic weapons are the build defining weapons they should have been from the start. Not to say normal weapons don't have a place, as they are the only weapons capable of taking weapon mods witch may complement your play-style better at the cost of having to buy/find better rarity variations instead of upgrading them like you would with a iconic. As for clothing, they are mostly cosmetic with only a few pieces have stats and they are more minor additive bonuses like a bit of extra armor or slightly quicker hacks.

So where does your armor come from now? Well, cyberware. The rework to cyberware is probibly one of the best changes they made as in 1.X most of the chrome for offer was minor stat changes that barely felt worth the money to get installed. outside of a few pices like the subdermal armor, your chosen arm weapon and your choice of speedware none of it really felt like it was important to your build witch was a massive letdown in terms of theme. Now your chrome is a lot more important as the majority of your armor comes from it and the cyber on offer is much more powerful, granting you build defining bonuses.

Best example is the interrogatory system, only thing of value was the sub-dermal armor, as more damage resistance is universally good, whereas fire immunity or shock resistance is only gonna come up every now and then. Now theres implants that give damage resistance based on distance to the target, give you damage resist during the use of the Karensikov ability, one that gives temporary invisibility so on and so forth. If an implant doeskin seem that worth it its now probably worth it to another build, or it has good armor attached to it. However with this change, you now have a budget on how much Cyberware can be installed on your character that goes up as you level and put points into certain skills, making this system more central to the games progression as you want to level not only to increase stats, but also to get more and better cyberware.

Ohh and the talent trees now... Dear god they are so clean! Each stat has three trees attached to them with about 2-4 core abilities each having their own modifier talents. These core abilities define more of your character, letting you queue up multiple quick-hacks, giving throwing knifes a poison effect that buffs other attacks, shotguns having a chance to instagib targets, taping into cyber-psychosis temporarily for buffs, slowing down time when aiming with pistols and lots lots more.

Character builds are just fun to make now, the progression no longer feels meaningless and chore-like. It feels like a full blown new game.