Everything You Need To Know About Cyberpunk 2077's Weapon Types

The launch of Cyberpunk 2077 has arrived, and fans are more than a little excited to take their first steps in Night City and do some damage. Based on what the critics are saying, there's good reason to be.

To take part in the power struggles raging in this seedy metropolis, you'll need some means to commit acts of violence. Luckily, CD Projekt Red has stuffed its game with an impressively large selection of weaponry. There are four main types of weapon that we'll be looking at in this guide, but bear in mind that behind each category lies a wealth of variety. Weapons come in five rarity types, from common all the way to legendary. They can be bought from any of Night City's 12 weapons manufacturing corporations, each one with their own quirks and specialties.

There are also tons of ways to customize your weaponry, ensuring that you have a combat experience that's best suited to you. As well as offensive cyberware that can be used in battle, you can also pick augmentations, modifications, and ammo types to taste. You might want a stealthy, silent build, for example, or non-lethal shots if you're going for a pacifist playthrough.

As you have no doubt probably guessed, melee weapons are the ones you can hit people with. Though guns and ranged weapons will probably be the most popular option in the world of Cyberpunk 2077, it's not all blasting enemies from afar. Sometimes you'll want to get up close and personal.

When you're in the mood to dispatch your opponents up close, there'll be a good selection of melee weapons for you to choose between. You can slice and dice with blades like the Thermal Katana, send foes flying with mighty blows from a sledgehammer, or augment your body with nasty-looking cyberware like Mantis Blades or Gorilla Arms to pack a mightier (or stabbier) punch.

In terms of getting the most out of your melee weapon of choice, the stats you'll want to focus on will be either Body or Reflex, depending on whether your weapon is more the dexterous skill-based or brute force type.

From the name, you might expect power weapons to use some sort of energy-based projectile, but in fact, this is the name given to guns that use traditional bullets and magazines. Indeed, many of the weapons you'll find in this category come in recognizable shapes and sizes: shotguns, pistols, SMGs, and the like.

While they're the least futuristic-looking weapons in Cyberpunk 2077's arsenal, power weapons do come with the advantage of a high rate of fire. While running and gunning is certainly a viable strategy, you can also use these weapons a bit more strategically. Bullets in Cyberpunk will ricochet off surfaces, so if you want to feel clever, you can bounce shots around corners to take out enemies that are lurking beyond your field of vision. There is one key downside, though, and that's recoil, which can be tricky to manage, especially on guns with extremely high firing rates.

But why fire a bullet when you could be firing a tiny, little, deadly homing rocket? That's what smart weapons launch — projectiles that can home in on enemies, ensuring that every single shot counts. Talk about being economical!

Smart weapons have a great deal of versatility, too. You can use long-range guns to take out hard-to-hit enemies from a distance or deal with whole groups of bad guys with homing shotgun blasts that can down ten goons with one pull of the trigger.

The other reason to use smart weapons is if you're not a hardened FPS veteran. If you mainly want to enjoy Cyberpunk 2077 for its setting and story and don't want to have to worry about reflexes and twitchy trigger fingers, smart weapons could be the choice for you. In this way, it bears some resemblance to the VATS system, which was a great innovation to the Fallout series.

Tech weapons are so named because they use electromagnetic technology to propel projectiles at ridiculous speeds. If you've ever used a railgun in a video game, you'll have some idea what you're in for: slow rate of fire, high rate of killing stuff.

Indeed, you'll have to take cover for a couple of seconds after letting off a tech weapon, waiting until you can fire again. It may not be the best choice for the impatient, but the results you'll see if you can land your shots with accuracy will likely be well worth it.

This weapon type also has great penetration, making it handy for dispatching armored targets. Tech weapons can fire right through walls, so if your luckless enemies are trying to hide behind some cover, you can blow both it and them away by bringing one out. You might also be able to find some stealthier applications for this feature.