So I tried out the new update. First new one since release for me. Some thoughts. Just to preface this, I created my character with all charm increases.
Not sure if it's just me, but I can increase combat and charm just fine, but cunning just doesn't want to go up. I get those % notifications for a bit but they stop pretty early. One of them was saying I was more keen, but it seems like I can't increase these stats past a certain point. Maybe there's certain activities I'm not doing, or something else. But yeah I had a lot of charm and combat and like 5 cunning.
If possible would be nice to say in the red phone what activities improve which stats.
It would also be great if the traits all had names and not just descriptions. I think it would clean up that menu a lot and make it more clear. Like for example "Sticky Fingers, you can now pickpocket a second victim at the same time"
I like the xp bar for reputation. Would love to see that % notification applied to this too. Like when you gain rep a popup saying "Gained 46 rep, 4012/5000".
Combat actually felt fine once I went to the gym. But before that it was rough.
Oh, and the last thing. It seems like a lot of encounters can be solved by sighting, giving money, or giving items (drugs etc). I would be nice if there was essentially a path for each main stat. So you could seduce, fight, or trick them. Right now it feels like having combat skill helps you a lot more than the other stats do.
I would love if seduction acts that reward money, would also increase rep. Like those random events. Maybe not GloryHole, because it is designed to be anonymous.
I did find rep still somewhat hard to increase unless you are just collecting items to make shipments to give to the distributor. Which, I guess is the main way to increase it and gain money. But I ended up doing a lot of other side activity instead that gave me money but not rep. Like selling pickpocketed items, or from robberies or dealing drugs, etc.
I really like that you can essentially bulk buy items later in the game once you open your club. Not sure if that whole club system is going to be fleshed out a lot more but there's a lot of potential there for story events etc.
I would love more ways to get passive income, the crypto farm is nice but seems pretty slow. But maybe the idea is to stack them and maybe they will get upgrades later.
I didn't explore much of the late game parts where you're attacking other gangs so I can't comment on too much of that.