Cyberpunk 2077 (2020)

I played Cyberpunk 2077 in its glorious, polished version, and man... what a game. What a world. I thought V would be this character with minimal personality, but he/she actually had a personality, and a pretty solid character at that. Driving was fun and easy to maneuver. I did notice that they erased the cars in the distance in front of you as to not hinder you in driving, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

There were a lot of builds you could experiment with, and a lot of them were very fun. My first build was a Netrunner, because it felt unique to the world of Cyberpunk, and the entire quickhacks variations and how you can customize and play around with it was just so much fun to play.

I actually liked the characters despite a lot of them being not stereotypically 'good'. People are especially selfish in this world, including our own V.

I never played the bad version of this game. This looked so good on my TV! I would get crashes every so often but after WATCH DOGS 3 this was a walk in the park! Very functional!

I loved the story too. I got to credits 5 times. I did every (i thought) side quest and got to my first ending at about 70 hours. I did not get to my last (and favourite) ending until 100 hours!

There were whole characters and questlines that did not show up until I continued after the credits!

Anyway, I really try to "role play" my V and my decisions and as I was getting endings I was starting to get disappointed because they did not feel good. Like, they were fine but did not feel good to me.

Then the last time, it felt SO GOOD and SO RIGHT and was everything I thought I had to head canon to get! It was then I was like, "ok, I am done now" and I gave up on 100%ing it, the ending was so perfect!

Anyway, great game! Totally worth $9! (I got a sealed clearance copy of the original X1 release and free updated to the Series X version)

Compared to Fallout -- the dialogue trees are similar, the gunplay is similar, the first-person perspective is similar, the quest system is similar, and even the mediocre storytelling is similar.

The game was honestly starting to lose me until I finally upgraded to mantis blades and a double-jump. Then it was fun being able to run along the rooftops and jump into a fight. I kind of wish that the game did a better job of ushering you into doing the ripperdoc upgrades.

The main storyline was the part I found least interesting. The side missions were where this game was at. I hit the "point of no return" for the main story surprisingly early in my playthrough. Then I completely refocused on the side missions, and found myself having a more enjoyable time for the 20-30 hours or so that followed. The Cyberpsychos & Gigs? -- yeah, I skipped most of those.

I almost made it all the way through my 50 hour playthrough without a single crash. Then it crashed during the final mission. The bugs I encountered on the PS5 version were minimal, and nothing you wouldn't expect to see in a Bethesda game.

I'm satisfied with the ending route I chose (letting Johnny run the final mission; then Johnny takes over V's body since he's gonna die anyways). I really have no desire to go in and do the other endings -- I "earned" the ending I picked. Truthfully, CDPR is gonna have to do some crazy-good stuff to draw me back into Night City with the still-unknown DLC they're working on.

My review doesn't sound like a 4-star review. But really, it just comes down to that feeling of satisfaction I had after playing through the game. This is not a bad game.

I didn’t get caught up in the Cyberpunk hype (I’ve only spent a few hours in Witcher 1 & 2 and didn’t get into them) so leaving the game a year to allow them to patch and polish it was easy and coincided with me getting a free Stadia controller & Chromecast Ultra and wanted to try out their service. I had some time off over the festive period so here I am 46 game hours later…

• The Good.

To start with the positive, this is without a doubt a good Cyberpunk Cyberpunk game and has all the trappings of the genre, wrapped in good narrative world building fiction that has it share of serious moments but a whole lot of comedy to be had throughout.

For some reason that took me a few hours to work out the real meat of the worldbuilding, the most entertaining storylines and a ton of character-focused stories are to be found in a section called “Side Jobs”. I have no idea why they’d do that; I thought they were just that jobs to be done for quick cash, funds for new body mods (which the game has plenty, though unsatisfyingly, they are simply selected from a menu screen like any RPG – you never get see a ripperdoc performing surgery on your character or effect your looks more than your clothing choices do). I do wonder how many other people flew through the main storyline missions and overlooked these too? For example, in one of the ‘side jobs’ you visit the relatives at a bar who are having a drink for the recent death of a character, you get to meet them all and say a few words. It’s a nice moment out to reflect and I appreciate that someone actually wrote a scene like this and actually made the cut in the final gold master. I can’t recall experiencing anything similar before. Again, how this is a “side job” I don’t know.

Also mixed in the side jobs are Cyberpunk themed off-stories such as a funny multi-part mission with an A.I. who runs a chauffeur service on the brink and a whole host of missions around Johnny Silverhand (Keanu Reeves’ character) wanting to get his old band back together and many follow up “jobs” as you get to know them.

Overall, the game has good voice acting, your choice of protagonist is fully voiced and the female V, Cherami Leigh, I chose did an excellent job with the material. I also enjoyed the hell out of Keanu’s character. Keanu seems to be having a blast and if you exhaust the side jobs, you'll be spending a lot of time with Keanu along for the ride. How you feel probably depends on your feelings on Reeves but I’ve long been a fan so it made the hours all more enjoyable (even though ultimately I chose not to side with him in the main game’s closing decision making).

I was not a fan of CD Projekt Red’s games before this, I haven’t played enough of them to form an opinion either way; I’m not really a sword and magic-fantasy guy so something has to really hook me (Dragon Age Inquisition did for example) to get me playing and didn't. I honestly didn’t have much hope that the studio known for making sprawling fantasy RPGs could make a sci-fi shooter as much as I had any hope that Bethesda could make an online Fallout game when their solo offline games barely function best of times so I am really surprised that the shooting mechanics are solid. The guns are all punchy and chaining guns, melee weapons and quick-hacking makes for quick, snappy fight sequences that I never tired of. For a first time shooter they at least pull that off.

Building an open world city, futuristic or not, is far departure from building an open world fantasy game. You have to make the city feel alive, deal with populating streets, handle pedestrians & vehicles. This unfortunately 12 months down the road is still 50/50. The design team pulled their work off fabulously, the game map consists of Night City surrounded by desert. The desert is full of abandoned buildings, nomad tribes, a dump and feels lived in, travel into the city limits and you’ll find shanty towns of homeless, abandoned old architecture mixed in with modern skyscrapers, market stalls, seedy shops and clubs. All varied and all designed with aplomb. Unfortunately, the wheels fall off the supporting elements and remind you are playing a videogame that needed 12 months more production and not just 12 months of hotfixes. So here we go…

• The Bad

The roads are virtually empty of cars in places, this makes it much easier to travel (I always drove motorbikes as they’re easiest to nip around on) unless you are on a mission with scripted chases then you will see a whole different amount of traffic (always the same cars in the same places in these scripted bits) but when I see a “futuristic city” and has less traffic then my local town it hardly makes it feel alive.

You’ll doubt your sanity as you witness people disappearing & re-appearing in front of your eyes and there are duplicate people all over the place. An ongoing issue with Cyberpunk is something like a gunshot or fight some NPC’s will crawl up into a ball – you will see characters stuck in this animation all over the place, in some areas that you haven’t even been to like there was some prior fight you weren’t privy to and the people have PTSD and refuse to uncurl themselves. One mission I shot the off the lock holding a fire escape ladder so I could get into a club, upon entering the club 90% of the punters where in this position, with a handful of other clubbers wandering around like they just don’t care. A gunshot outside of the building shouldn’t have been loud enough (or travelled through the walls) of a club in full swing, that it did but only broke the logic of some characters is a perfect example of how the gaming mechanics, the lack of polish of which, fight against you getting drawn into the world too much. You are constantly being held at arm’s length getting sucked into the world of Cyberpunk by constant reminders you are playing an unfinished videogame.

Police are broke, they still don’t appear implemented properly. I don’t expect or want a GTA system but there simply appears to be no system. You can shoot up people and the Police and their drones simply spawn around you. They don’t appear to be (in my experiences) programmed to drive or follow you so you can drive around the corner and be safe. Other times I have done things that would cause “wanted stars” previously and the Police simply couldn’t be bothered to show.

The mission system is pretty horrible at knowing when you're on a job; you get constant calls when you're doing other things and V gets stuck in between having a phone conversation for a future mission and the current mission/ story side job you are currently on so you get stuck in this bizarre cycle of V trying to respond, having to see I will call you back, trying to flip to current story and back again.

There are a bunch of Bethesda sized glitches present in the game. For example when I entered an elevator after a side job and my character inexplicably died and a load checkpoint screen appeared as Keanu was trying to tell me what to do next. I was on another mission where we were staking out a place to break into and an NPS car was stuck ramming a wall to the facility I was scoping out (that would be on high alert). Breaking any tension immediately.

It would appear that Sat Nav systems get worse in the next fifty years. It constantly wants me to do a u-turn instead of realising I'm facing another direction and re-route me. Whilst on the subject of vehicles, the cars are prone to getting stuck on things invisible and I have had to abandon them. Another reason I moved over to using motorbikes.

You can see areas in which CD Projekt Red have cut corners in animation by hiding behind jump cuts of which there are constant to hide scene and character transitions, to keep animations to a minimum they’ll deploy a jump cut and character will have moved position or place. Once you know what I mean, you will see them a lot. In the latter few hours of my game, I was best friends with a black bar that decided to stay stuck on screen long after the subtitles it was displaying had gone.

Overall the game runs well on Stadia. However, it hardly shouts next-gen. I’ve had a look at some footage captured on high-end PC’s and I still say some things are sorely lacking e.g., unimpressive rain effects, which at times its deployed fights against the atmosphere they are presumably trying to invoke. Some humans look great, some do not. Some areas look great, some do not. It really is a mixed bag.

• Conclusion

Would I recommend Cyberpunk? If played on Stadia (where I enjoyed it) or on a PC that is so powerful as to also compute the meaning of life, then yes. As of writing the PS4 and Xbox One versions are still a watered-down joke and should be ignored until they release a proper dedicated PS5 and Xbox Series X version.

If you want to play a Cyberpunk game, then CD Projekt Red have got you; they certainly made a solid piece of work in that genre. It is literally what it says on the tin; it’s a Cyberpunk game alright. It’s a shame that it didn’t get another 12 months in development and I still don’t understand why CD Projekt Red were so vocal on a game that wasn’t finished. They must know that gamers are the most vocal group of enthusiasts. Anyone can google Peter Molyneux and learn where broken promises and talking about game mechanics that realistically have no chances of actually making final cut gets you. Our Peter did it decades before the CD Projekt did. And just like Molyneux's games we're left to poke & prod the game that development produced and not the broken promises that preceeded it.

This is an amazing game but there is divided opinion around it. I think the divide is mainly due to the hype that was created - those that bought into the hype were understandably very disappointed (esp. console players due to botched release) and those that were oblivious to the hype probably liked it.

Despite the sub par graphics and countless bugs, it takes gaming experience to a whole new level.

Pros:

The Heist mission and the build up to it is one of a kind in terms of player engagement, immersiveness and narrative and in my opinion has no parallels in gaming history. The prologue is by far the best part of the game.

I played it for 55 hours and it never seemed repetitive. Every mission has something unique to it and keeps you engaged. Unlike in other games, the side jobs in this one are meaningful and add to the rich storyline.

The game also has an uncanny ability to make you feel nostalgic when you revisit certain places.

The quickhacks and numerous other abilities add enough variety to the arsenal.

The braindance investigations are very interesting and keep the player engaged.

The character development is good.

Cons:

The in game graphics are a pale shadow of what was shown in the trailer.

There are bugs which will require reloading a previous save.

We receive notifications of some side jobs only when we reach the spot. Not sure what was the reasoning behind this. The few cyberpsycho missions that I did were some of the most intriguing and thrilling missions in the game but finding them is not easy.

There was so much novelty and so many rich possibilities in the prologue that some of the characters could have been extended much further into the game instead of ending it in fiasco and killing Jackie, Evelyn and Dexter. We are informed of V's impending death due to the biochip at a time when we know very little of him, this revelation should have been timed better at a later point in the game when we know him better and have more empathy for him.

If you want to do the missions in stealth, you may be disappointed as the options are very limited and you will end up using the same trick again and again.

Despite the negative press, it remains one of the best games of 2020. I am sure this game will inspire game developers for years to come.

I am disappointed by this game. My disappointment comes from seeing the beginnings of a good game in there, but the developers not being given the time or resources to get it there. I feel like this was a victim of scope creep. They wanted to make a huge open world but also a tight playing first person stealth combat game, but they might have been better served by focusing on one or the other given their constraints. Lastly, before getting into a little list of pros and cons, I wanted to say that I played this on an Xbox One X after the 1.2 patch. The talk of bugs has been swarming the discussion of this game, and I only experienced a handful of bugs during my playthrough, plus It ran decently and never crashed.

Things I enjoyed!

The Visuals and sound - This game is incredibly good looking. I actually enjoyed the implementation of such effects--often people don't like chromatic aberration as an example, but if there was ever a game where that fit the style, this is it. More broadly the art direction was pretty on point. When I was walking around Night City exploring it looked like an interesting place. But, was it an interesting place? More on that later! Additionally, the game sounded incredible, both effects and the music I heard.

Things that took me out of the experience!

empty bland and boring open world: The open world was empty, bland and boring - plain and simple. On the empty front, there just wasn't the density of people I expected out of a megacity. Same with cars on the road. There never felt like there was any hustle or bustle, even in the market areas. Even then, when I did encounter people they didn't really have anything to say, and they just walked in a straight line and maybe touched a vending machine on their way.

It felt bland and boring largely because I didn't find anything to do while exploring. There wasn't anything out there but the same handful of missions where I got into combat?

jarring quest design Another frustration came when I thought to check in with a fixer that I worked with in the game's opening mission. I entered her territory and she called me up to say I should drop by as we have some unfinished business. As soon as I get off the phone, she sends me a text. At risk of getting fined for distracted driving, I pull out my phone to check the text and she apparently has a car for sale.. interesting, okay, I wonder why she didn't mention that to me on the phone seconds ago. I close the text thinking she's just a little forgetful in her old age. Seconds later, I get another text -- I really don't want to get pulled over for staring at my phone, here, but I dutifully check the text. She says there's some person she wants me to go visit, another gig for me.. Again, I suppose she forgot when we chatted. I'm almost at her place so we'll sort it out when I get there. I walk through the beads into the den of iniquity, she looks up from her terminal and says 'What are you doing here?'.. Really?! Look, again I swallow it and I chalk it up to a seniors moment.

Anyway, in all seriousness this happens not only with this fixer and it's mildly infuriating way of doling out quests and supposedly building these fixers up to be the best of the best in their regions.

limited customization options: I look around me and and in both the world I see and the advertisements I'm fed, I'm told I can become anything and modify my body to my heart's content. That wasn't the case. I couldn't even get a haircut let along play around with bionic implants.

Male V's VO performance: The performance took me out of the game more than it added to any moments when 'my' character spoke. I think I still really prefer a voiceless protagonist for a game where you asks you to make dialogue decisions, even if their impact is largely illusory.

boring combat Dumb AI that would run right up to me out of cover? Check Bullet sponges (or perhaps more appropriately 'bat hit sponges' because I played with a Bat)? Check. No challenge and nothing interesting here.

miscellaneous rough edges Once in a while the bugs took me out of the game. For example, early in the story I had lost access to my car--it was totaled by someone in the story, and it no longer existed in my inventory to be summoned at whim. Okay, so no wheels, no big deal, they even gave me a quest to go speed along it's repair. Makes sense! Around the same time I was gifted a motorcycle by a character and I thought 'Cool, I want to ride that thing!'. So I went into my phone, summoned my new ride, and it appeared! Sweet! But wouldn't you know it: it wasn't alone. My old ride had appeared with it, the supposedly broken one, and it was CRUSHING my new motorcycle! I was happy to see my old car, but I was very upset that it was destroying my bike. Anyway, I jumped into my old ride and drove around - the game was none the wiser, that quest for me to speed along its repair still open. Curious, no?

While I did enjoy the two for one whenever I summoned my bike, I had to look at some janky-ness face on, and I don't often enjoy doing that, especially when it reminds of what this game could have been.

Overall Overall, this adds up to something that simply didn't feel like it was ready for prime time. A lot of what's in there beyond presentation feels half-baked and I just didn't have very much fun playing this game. Unlike the possibility of re-birth promised by a Cyberpunk universe, a poor game can't be fixed by small technical modifications. The core of the game needed more work and it's shame it turned out the way it did.

I finally finished this game yesterday and I just felt the need to write my thoughts about this game down. Because there is a lot to be said. Especially since I rewatched the gameplay presentation from 2018 and compared it to the actual gameplay. So fasten your seatbelt and bare with me, this could evolve into a wall of text, but there are a few things you should know before playing/buying this game.

I'm gonna structure this review into the following segments:

• Bugs
• Story
• Open World
• Gameplay
• Pacing
• Conclusion

I'll try to keep this review spoiler-free, so I hope you'll enjoy it!

Bugs

Alright, we have to address the elephant in the room first. This game has bugs. A lot of them. This in itself is not really a problem for me, depending on the type of bug. I mean, a lot of huge open world games suffer from a lot of bugs which haven't been fixed (Hello, Skyrim and Fallout!) and still they are considered great games. A few unnatural moves or behaviours from npcs here and there are acceptable and can even lead to hilarious and refreshing moments. After all, a open world game needs to consider more variables than a strictly linear game where everything happening is kinda scripted in advance.

It gets tricky though when these bugs start to become game breaking. And that is the case for Cyberpunk. Apparently there were bugs that left you stuck in the main story, unable to progress. Fortunately for me I didn't encounter them myself, but I know exactly how much frustration that would cause me would it happen to me. I already got really frustrated for bugs that left me unable to complete side quests or weird sounds like the sound of hacking a machine being on a loop for the whole time (while driving, during dialogues and so on). There also buggy mechanics that make the gameplay feel awful in certain situations, but I'll get to that later.

Story

This where the game shines in my opinion, and where it shows it's huge potential. The setting is quite unique and the story is interesting and always made me wonder how it would continue/end. Furthermore, Keanu Reeves is just such a fantastic actor that he really carries the story and the game a far way. Plus there are quite a few other interesting and likeable characters. However, the main character, "V" (whoever thought that having only one letter would be a good name) is really bland. I get that it's different from Witcher, where you had one of the coolest and greatest main characters ever, because you can "customize" V and play them however you want. Well, it didn't felt that way for me. The background stories you could select at the beginning had veery little impact on the overall game apart from the first like 15 minutes and a couple of dialogue options here and there. And talking about dialogue options: there weren't even that many of them most of the time and even when there were some, they basically almost said the same thing in the end. Or sometimes V said something completely different than the option you selected. Overall, I didn't really feel connected with V, it wasn't a scripted character, but it also wasn't my character.

Open World

All that potential built by the story and a few characters pretty much goes down the sewers when you realize that the meat of the game, the side quests, gigs and open world activities, consist mostly of dull and repetitive filler content. Sure, there are a few really interesting side quests and a few of those even impact the ending to some extent, but apart from that, you have gigs that follow the approach of "get into x base full of enemies, steal , hack or kill something and get the hell out". I mean sure, it's fun at first to tear apart a base and play hackerman or hitman. But I don't need to do it a thousand times. I expect more from a so called "RPG" that is based on a freaking tabletop rpg. I can play a Ubisoft game and work through some minimap icons and enemy bases if I get the itch for it. You might think now "well when the gameplay is great, I don't mind a bit of repetitiveness". Well, I've got some bad news for you.

Gameplay

Oh boy, here it comes. I don't even know where to start with the gameplay. Let me tell you, it is one big mess. And that's not good for a game that relies on lenghty, repetitive gameplay.

The AI in this game is a joke. Allies and enemies rarely behave in a way that makes any sense during combat. The driving felt terrible, it got fixed a bit though in the meantime. The boxing fights which are quite a few side quests are one of the worst things ever designed. The enemies are completely broken, basically knocking you out with one or two hits while being tanky as fuck themselves. The hitboxes are disgusting, dodging or blocking doesn't even work properly. For some reason however, Gorilla Arms are allowed in those fights (implants that make your hits stronger) and they are the ONLY way to make these fights managable (they cost quite a lot btw) and even then the fights remain really obnoxious. Furthermore, there is a well known bug that allows you to use a weapon (!) in a boxing match by dropping it before a fight and not a single npc cares. This bug hasn't got fixed yet, half a year after release with hundreds of patches even though it's all over the internet. I wonder if CDPR just had mercy and allows players to cheese these shitty box fights and therefore willingly refuses to patch it.

Now at this point you might say that this doesn't matter and you can just entirely skip things like the boxing fights. Fair enough. Here comes my biggest issue gameplay wise, however: The stealth system is by far the worst I've ever seen in my life as a gamer.

Sure, again you could say, just don't care about stealth, stealth is just an option. That is partially true, I think you can play through the main story without sneaking once. However, thats not the case for side quests, some of them require you to be silent or give you extra rewards and therefore promote stealth.

But even if you can play through the main story without stealth, what's the point? This game advertized itself as a game full of big and small choices that impacted the whole game and the world (just go watch the gameplay reveal), but looking at the final product, your choices are extremely limited, and one of those few choices should be the freedom to approach missions differently. Especially in a RPG, where common sense sometimes just TELLS you to not march into this heavy fortress full of drones, mechs and soldiers with your gun in your hand and being all like "Fuck yeah, YOLO, this is Call of Duty and I'm gonna kill some dudes". Instead you might think, "Hm, maybe I should be smarter and hack and sneak my way around it". Well, good luck on dealing with the shitty stealth system. What's wrong with the stealth system, you ask? Well, here we go.

First, the stealth takedowns just seem...underwhelming. If you're a hardcore fan like me who loves the old Assassin's Creed games (not the modern abominations) it was really satisfying to stab some templars with your hidden blade and make them vanish so nobody sees you coming (not sounding like a psychopath at all if you read this part out of context). In Cyberpunk, you have like 2 different animations for stealth takedowns and both are not really doing it for me. Plus they require you to grab the enemy first by staying DIRECTLY behind them, no room for errors. You can't pierce them with your mantis blades or your katana, nope sir. You gotta go grab him and breack his neck, it's the only way because V is suuuuch a badass, dayum.

Even worse, Enemies for some reason can simply discover you without any reason just because they feel like it. I had a situation in one of the last missions of the main story where I sneaked up behind an enemy just to see his bar gradually fill even though he was CLEARLY turning his back towards me and he was busy smoking or talking on the phone or something. And no, there weren't any cameras, I always hack them before I take down enemies. Same with dead bodies. They just get randomly discovered which raises the alarm if you don't drop them in the RANDOM empty boxes just sitting around waiting for you to drop some dead bodies in it. And again, there were NO cameras, so there is absolutely no reason they could get discovered, no matter how well you hide it. I mean what is the point of implementing sneaking and so many mechanics related to it if you can't even get the basics straight CDPR?

Pacing

Open world or sandbox games often have problems with pacing simply due to the nature of the genre. You have the dilemma that you should write an engaging main story that keeps you hooked, but at the same time there should be side activities that are engaging as well. Obviously if those side activites get too interesting they will draw you away from the main story, which leads to absurd situations where the world is going to end while our charismatic hero is busy fishing to empty his questlog. That's standard open world stuff and only a few games of the genre really found the perfect way to solve this dilemma. So when I play an open world game, I'm used to the weird pacing. However, Cyberpunk REALLY takes the cake for the worst pacing ever.

I won't go into detail here because I promised to keep this review spoiler-free, but to elaborate on my point: V has a very, very good reason to follow the main story. And it's not just "save the world" , he has some important personal reasons. However, the side Missions are - with a few exceptions - COMPLETELY UNRELATED to the main story and they completely deny the situation and seriousness of the main story. V seems to be like a completely different person during side quests too. And even if you encounter a couple of interesting people during the main story or side quests, these characters - again with a few exceptions - barely or never interact with each other. So at the end of the day, these side quests you do feel so absolutely disconnected from everything else that it almost feels like you enter a separate dimension every time you start a side quest where everything else never happened. How am I supposed to be immersed in such a world. What poor attempt at world building is that? Side Quests should do just that, but holy do they fail in delivering that (again quoting the initial gameplay reveal from 2018: a world full of choices, where your choices shape the world and the rest of the story).

The main plot is cool in itself, but it doesn't make sense when you choose the setting/genre of a sandbox game. A possible solution would have been to focus on the story and let the player discover the open world afterwards freely as they want, like other games did before. Well, a shame, because in Cyberpunk this isn't even possible (again, not spoiling the endings, so not going into detail why), which makes the pacing even worse.

The best advice I can give for every future Cyberpunk player: Try to focus on the main story as much and only do the sidequests that REALLY interest you or that involve a character you encounter in the main story. Those are generally well written and engaging, but ditch all the cheap filling stuff. Then you get the best possible experience of the game because again, the main story really is interesting and worth experiencing.

Conclusion

Initially when I was thinking about writing this review, I didn't plan to bash this game that hard. After all, I had some great moments too and there is a reason (apart from my completionist urge and fear of missing out) why I played through the whole game, a lot of the side stuff and even watched all possible endings (not done in a few minutes, I can tell you that). However, after rewatching the gameplay reveal from 2018 and comparing it to the gameplay, I got really furious. I strongly recommend that you watch it too, and tell me that we didn't get a watered down version of the game promised to us. So many features are missing, some things got cut out for NO reason and the whole experience just feels so underwhelming because the potential for this kind of game was so huge and the discrepancy is so obvious. That was the point when I finally came to realize how hard they messed up this game. Until November, CDPR was one of my favorite companies and it was considered the best Development Studio in Europe. I love their masterpiece, the Witcher Series, but they absolutely destroyed their reputation and credibility by releasing Cyberpunk. This game feels like a pre-Alpha version that barely touches all the features it could and should offer. Instead of a deep, engaging RPG based on a tabletop game we got an absolutely generic ARPG Shooter. There is no way this game should have been allowed to be released in it's current form, and at full price as well. Good thing Sony and Microsoft removed it from their stores.

A lot of unkept promises and lies from CDPR, which I held in really high regards until now. Cyberpunk taught me two valuable lessons:

1. NEVER EVER preorder, even if it's your favorite franchise or you like the developers. They will disappoint you eventually. It happened to me with Assassin's Creed, it happens with CDPR. There is a dangerous trend of half-finished games getting released at full price.

2. Some games are not worth completing 100% or even finishing. If the developers are too lazy to deliver quality content and they choose to pad out the game length with cheap filler content, don't even bother. They robbed your money already, don't give them more of your time than they deserve as well.

I have had a blast with this game, though of course on a midrange PC. On old-gen consoles, it's a problem, as everyone knows by now. It's not perfect but if we would wait for absolute perfection, nothing would get 5 stars. It has some flaws but it is outstanding in several areas, so much so that it deserves its rating. And with some additional patches and updates, this game is going to be a new masterpiece.

Graphics

Let's start with this, the game looks amazing on a decent PC. I don't have a high-end graphics (Radeon R9 390, 5+-year-old card) card but was able to play it on 1080p High (with some tweaks) at around 45 FPS. With an HDR monitor as well, with HDR enabled, it looks truly amazing. Really curious to see how it will look on 1440p Ultra when I will be able to upgrade my GPU.

The World

We have a huge, bustling metropolis, Night City, realized in exquisite detail. It just looks beautiful, I loved driving around it. I pretty much never used the fast travel option. Also, you can drive anywhere you want, without any loading screens (at least with an SSD, but nowadays that's standard on PC) which is pretty impressive and adds to the immersion.

The Story and Characters

The writing is excellent, I found myself enjoying not only the main jobs and side jobs but even the gigs have often interesting writing and voice acting. The characters are expertly crafted, great writing is added to great graphics for some really memorable characters. Especially loved Panam and Johnny.

Combat and Character progression

This one is not amazing but it's competent. I built a stealthy netrunner and I struggled with it initially but later on, I was pretty overpowered. The guns do feel really good to shoot, they are well crafted. But combat difficulty probably needs some balancing as it's too easy later on.

Bugs

Yes, it was buggy at launch but after the first flurry of hotfixes, most serious issues were resolved. I did have maybe 3-4 crashes in 90 hrs and a few other bugs that broke immersion. Not enough though to take away from the achievement of these devs. And in 1-2 months even those will be resolved nicely, I am confident in that.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a great game that could be one of the best games if not for the exaggerated ambitions of the developers and too much hype. It resulted in painful launch with tsunami of glitches, cut content, wasted potential and a big drop in trust to the beloved CDPR. It's the most broken game I've ever played and also my favorite at the same time. Even though I had over 60 crashes I platinumed the game, and here's why.

Let's start with the elephant in the room, the glitches, bugs and crashes. I played on PS5 and Oh My Lord, this game tested my patience like nothing else in my entire life. At the moment when I got the platinum I had over 60 crashes. This means that I had to reboot my game and often replay a certain part more than 60 times. Worth to mention that half the time I had to redo settings because they reseted and the defaults are horrible. After a week they fixed resetting settings but crashes remained till i finished the game. Glitches are constant and if you want to finish the game you have to deal with it. Invisible, immortal or dissapearing enemies, flying or exploding cars, unpickable items, NPCs walking through walls, doors that are stucked, trust me, I could do this all day and I wouldn't make it to the end of the list. Most of the time I didn't bother but sometimes I had to reload my save because something glitched that hard so I couldn't progress the game. With the game 7 years in developement this is totally unacceptable and I suspect that quality assurance team didn't test some parts of the game at all.

The game dissapointed me where i totally didn't expect it. The settings... They are horrible, I had to turn off 5 options to make the game look good, I spent a lot of time adjusting HDR because it wasn't calibrated at all, the game doesn't let you lower the sensitivity while aiming, but it lets you make it higher which makes no sense at all. Turning bonus and tons of more useless settings are set as default and playing with them is super uncomfortable. If you decide to get Cyberpunk 2077, make sure to spend your time setting it up properly.

The gameplay is okish, a little bit clunky at first but i learned to like it. I would compare it to fallout 4. Nothing too spectacular, but enjoyable. Unfortunately the game isn't balanced at all. I played full melee, mostly mantis blades and i started on high difficulty, after some lvls and perks i changed to very hard, because the game was way too easy. After around 10 hours I was the horror of Night City. I was 1 hitting literally everyone, jumping from one guy to another in 1 second. I had half of my health bar replenished after every kill, but to be honest i didn't need it at all. After I invested more in my character I had two revives in case i died and if I did, it's only because of grenades. Half way through the game i decided to not upgrade my character anymore and invest lvls and money in stuff that I needed for the platinum. This changed nothing and it continued till the end of the game, I killed the last boss in 2 hits. All of that on the hardest difficulty. I'm the guy that loves the challenge and this game provided none. It completed itself.

When it comes to RPG aspects, you have plenty of choice in roleplaying and developing your character, but nothing too crazy. Your choices matter, but not as much as you wanted to, you have some diversity in gameplay and quest approach and you can roleplay, but your character is always the same. V, the merc. And he always acts like V, the merc. Again, I would compare it to Fallout 4 and it's perfectly ok, nowhere the lvl of New Vegas tho and I kinda expected it to be.

When it comes to open world GTA like game aspects, the game lacks a lot. I never expected it to be like GTA and I never wanted it to be. Still, the game lacks basic open world mechanics. NPCs won't skip obstacles on the road, the police will never chase you, they will respawn next to you and they will lose interest shortly after you ride away, if you kill someone in a car to steal it, he will be alive at the moment you throw him out of the vehicle. This and more stuff like that, nothing too harsh, but the world feels kinda plastic because of this.

Some stuff looks like it's cut away. Right after the prologue you get a cutscene that looks like it's thrown there after they didn't make content in time. You meet in it characters that later talk to you like they meet you for the first time, pretty strange, isn't it? Also the whole pacifica region of the city looks unfinished. You can buy braindances that you can't later use. They advertised them like its a big part of the game, but it's barely in it. Looks cut to me. The game length is really satisfying tho, so I won't complain.

There's a lot of wasted potential and unfulfilled promises in Cyberpunk 2077. Romances are laughable. After you are done with your romance option quest chain, you get to have sex and that's it. You can't go on dates, you don't have any dialogue options, your bae is just there and does nothing. The devs promised complicated police system, but it barely exists at all. There's more to that, you can find it all over internet if you want.

Even though I played on PS5, it's impossible not to talk about current gen consoles problems. The game is even glitchier, but also looks like garbage and plays like garbage. I've seen early access games in a better state and you should never buy this version of the game. Shame on you CDPR.

Time for the good stuff. The game worked just fine on PS5, stable 60fps on high resolution. I played on 4k TV with HDR on. Night City looks beautiful, it has problems with rendering tho, especially while driving. I got used to it pretty fast. The interior design in this game is insane, every place is different and looks stunning. The city looks authentic and every section is different. Badlands are the nice addition and they are well designed. I just simply really enjoyed the designs, the graphics is good and the game runs perfectly. The driving system is surprisingly good, every car looks different, feels different and they all sound different... and really authentic. The OST is easily the best part of the game, music is well paired with gameplay and makes you feel totally badass. You can choose from more than 15 radio stations and they all offer great music. Samurai tracks, bodyheat radio songs and some gameplay OSTs filled my spotify and I'm addicted to them. Voice acting is just great, the cast did their job, and they did it well.

I mentioned that I had over 60 crashes, the story, the quest desing and the characters. These are the aspects of the game that made me stay. The quest desing is absolutely insane. Side quests chains in Cyberpunk 2077 could easily be DLCs, they are so well designed that it's beyond me. Forget stupid fetch quests or boring mini stories that devs flood us with these days, you won't experience them in cyberpunk. Some of the side quests are better than some big budget games that I've played. They are diverse, interesting and often touching, and you should totally do all of them. You also get a lot of contracts, they are typical merc jobs, they are like super short and small side quests, but they are never boring, diverse and you have plenty of ways to do them. If you just want action the map is filled with boss and enemies encounters and they are pretty pleasant. They often feature easter eggs or cool references.

The story is one of the best I've ever seen. It's a ride through every emotion. Story missions are just really fun. There are parts like from good action movies and also moments of sadness. I had goosebumps multiple times through the game, I cared for the characters and I did everything to end the game with glory. I can't write more to not spoil anything, but it's just great. The gameplay aspect of the story as well. There's just one sort of con of the story. I've seen all endings and I enjoyed only one. I feel like the rest lacked their potentials. It's a personal opinion tho.

The characters are simply awesome. Johnny is one of my favorite characters ever and Keeanu did a great job with him. V, the protagonist is pretty stale, but I really liked him. He works kinda like Sheppard from Mass Effect. Romance options are all great characters, I enjoyed everyone's accompany and their stories were great. The game is flooded with great character designs, cool robots, corrupted businessmans, complicated females and more. And they are all well designed trust me. You will meet some cameos like Grimes, Elon, Hideo or the voice of Glados as well.

In conclusion, Cyberpunk is a perfect story based game, a good RPG and a decent at best open world game. The launch was horrible and painful, the game should be at least one more year in developement and It should never be realised in that state. The story and quests wise, the game is that good, that I decided to push through the pain and platinum it. The game hits so hard because of over the top expectations. People forgot how painful was the launch of Witcher 3 and treat CDPR like Holy Grail of gaming industry. They failed big time and it will be hard to forget. The thing is, Cyberpunk 2077 is really good and they can easily improve it. Fix the bugs, improve AI, balance difficulty, add some open world mechanics and BAM! there's your triple A title. If they include better RPG mechanics in DLCs it can easily be one of the best games ever made. I didn't expect this game to be the next Holy Grail of gaming and that's why I loved it. I loved cyberpunk 2077, but I will always hate it's launch. I'm jealus of people who get to play the final product in about a year, because I played the alpha. I would love to give this game 5 stars, but it doesn't deserve it. I give it 4, I will revisit it with a true next gen version in the future and hopefully change it to 5 stars then.

7.5/10

Unfulfilled ambitions, tons of glitches and 73 crashes aside - this game is a thing of beauty and it will Never Fade Away.

~Wo

Cyberpunk 2077 is a new favorite of mine in the immersive first-person RPG world, a dark but consistently exciting dive of about 35-40 hours for me, into a world full of scarily impressive technology, pervasive violence and corruption, intriguing sci-fi-tinted themes of life and death, and dozens of memorable friends and allies to connect with.

The story starts strong, with a brief character backstory leading to a new career as a mercenary building up to a big heist mission that quickly sets the intriguing main plot in motion. The main structure of the game then begins as you open-endedly follow various leads toward solving the central conflict while making connections and building a name for yourself as a problem-solver throughout the city. This structure may seem at odds with the urgency of the main plot, but the game never forgets the stakes and blends together side and main conflicts very naturally. I love how the side content builds out various characters—Johnny is not getting enough credit as a character that changes over the game and gives a lot of interesting story moments.

Side missions are a critical part of the emotional resonance of the game and there are many valuable chains of them (and one-offs) throughout the game that are delivered at a natural pace by important characters. These can relate thematically to the big sci-fi questions of the game in interesting ways that give new perspective on the city and the game’s main conflict. The ending can vary dramatically based on choices in main and side missions — I was mostly satisfied with the bittersweet first ending I got which felt thematically appropriate and narratively satisfying. Compared to The Witcher 3, you’re much more in direct control of how it ends up which is both a negative and a positive in different ways. A couple factions and paths, mostly the corporations besides the main one, felt a little too one-off / underdeveloped so hopefully are expanded upon in DLC because from the lore standpoint they were interesting.

Gameplay will of course vary dramatically between players. My style was a lot of fun, 90% focused on hacking with a tendency toward stealth and creating chaos while slowly picking off enemies from afar. This could occasionally be simplistic, but harder enemies required careful use of hiding and distraction to stay alive, and the playstyle translated well to all-out action when needed. Rifles of all kinds and blade weapons felt great to use. Driving and general open-world navigation need improvement but are not a huge part of the game. The body augment system can be really cool and I was a big fan of the vast skill upgrade trees. Crafting was kinda superfluous as it always is in open world games but offered a nice way to upgrade my hacks progressively once I was happy with my loadout instead of having to go buy stuff all the time.

Artistically, the game looks really nice and detailed. The presentation is hurt by pervasive minor visual and audio bugs that fill the runtime, part of a larger bug problem that occasionally messes up controls or mission objectives. I have no regrets about playing the game at launch, but patient players will be rewarded with a more polished experience (resisting the urge to make a bad Polish joke). The game autosaves constantly and it’s very easy to quicksave so it never ruined my time in any way and gave a bit of unintended humor at times.

As an experience focused on world-building and character role-playing, this is a very satisfying time that doesn’t skimp out on having an exciting main plot and gameplay. The overall reaction to the game has provoked a lot of disappointment around what the game is not when compared to other unrelated titles or overhyped expectations, before many people have properly experienced what the game actually is trying to offer. I’m confident that the game is so strong that once removed from the absurd pre-release hype / marketing machine and the rushed, buggy launch, it will be reappraised by the gaming conmunity as an excellent RPG and worthy new direction for one of the genre’s kings. For now I urge those who are intrigued and have a current-gen console or PC to give it a shot and hope you love it as much as I did.

This game definitely has a lot of things going for it...but it also has a lot of problems.

PROS: The gameplay is pretty good: Gunplay is decent enough, but melee combat with weapons like katanas and the mantis blades felt really satisfying.

The story and characters are super well written and interesting. Not many characters I found that I didn't care for, and the dialogue was fun to listen to...didn't find myself reading ahead and skipping around due to boredom.

The side quests add a whole lot to the game. They don't feel like dull padding to give the illusion of tons of extra content; a lot of them feel like they are essential for the overall experience.

An awesome world to explore: The feel and atmosphere of Night City is really well done.

Graphically and technically (as long as you have the right hardware to run it on), it's pretty impressive what CDPR has done here. No load times as long as you're not fast travelling, and mostly everything looks pretty great.

CONS: Bugs galore: I didn't have anything game breaking, but a lot of annoying or silly things happened to me. The biggest nuisance was having to save and reload to get my HUD to reappear, to get an NPC to be in the correct position to continue a quest, or to get the game to read a certain input. Everything else I encountered were just visual bugs that gave me a good laugh.

Vehicles do not handle well in my opinion. This could be due to playing with a keyboard and mouse but it felt like I couldn't get any vehicle to turn properly, so I would use the reverse and handbrake keys at the same time to come to an almost complete stop to make every turn.

Couldn't get the game to run at 60 FPS to save my life. This wasn't a huge deal, I got it to run somewhat smoothly with the lowest being in the mid 30s and highest being in the low 40s. Had to settle for a good looking game over smooth framerate for this one.

I didn't feel like important quest/dialogue choices made any impact on anything besides which ending I got. This seems to be standard for these ambitious RPGs--they give you the illusion of choice but you usually end up with the same outcome...but at least with other games in the genre, certain things you did or said would lead to getting attacked by someone you pissed off or someone repaying you for your kindness later down the road. I didn't experience any of this really, but maybe I just didn't do the right quests to make things like this happen. I got to the end credits in about 30 hours, so I definitely didn't see everything Night City had to offer.

Note: this review was written following the game's original release. I can remark that having picked the game up again in the future, there are a number of bugfixes and improvements, but there are still performance issues and some jank in the game. I have not played through the game through a second time and have not updated the rest of the review as a result. My remarks about the writing still stand.

Playing this game was an unfortunately rough experience. It really had the opportunity to be something incredible but I frankly cannot recommend this game in its current state and price point, even on PC.

• Combat
  • Gunplay is solid and generally satisfying
  • Of the three gun types, power and smart felt very weak compared to tech (charge weapons)
  • Melee is cool, but mantis blades don't scale and are inferior to melee weapons mid-late game
  • Stealth is not very good. Enemies can be hilariously blind to your presence and there's rarely any difference if you beat an area loud or stealthily. Guards often don't have paths and it makes gameplay less interesting as a result.
  • Early game, enemies are spongy as hell, especially if you play on hard instead of normal
• Role Playing
  • Character creator is solid overall, can't change appearance after character creation so be warned
  • Skills, not so much. It's virtually impossible to max a tree unless you invest every level into it
  • Intelligence and Tech Expertise are really not that helpful. Having access to extra hacks or opening doors usually doesn't do much except save you a really brief walk to find another entrance. Most essential hacks don't need a high intelligence
  • Crafting is also unusable and useless; see below
  • Your background only affects the first tutorial mission and some dialogue lines that don't affect the story.
• Items, Crafting, Cybernetics
  • Money economy is totally unbalanced. After 40 hours I was only able to buy two vehicles because your income is too low
  • Similarly, items in shops are way too expensive - a legendary sniper rifle that was in a shop late game cost almost as much as all of the money I made in my entire playthrough
  • Cybernetics offer much more interesting customization than the perk tree, so don't forget about these.
• Open World
  • Night City is beautiful
  • The city design itself has a lot of personality; the different parts of the city really do feel different
  • Can't interact with much; it's mostly a pretty background for the player to do missions in
  • Certain mechanics like the police and the GPS are hilariously broken
• Graphics
  • Again, Night City is gorgeous
  • Performance is terrible on most platforms. Do not buy this if you own a base PS4 or XOne. The fact that these machines run at 15fps and sometimes less - it's absurd.
  • Even on PC, unless you have a $400+ graphics card, you might struggle to maintain 60fps even with resolution scaling. If you have a GPU that supports DLSS, the game can run pretty well but still requires compromises.
  • There are also so many graphical glitches you'll likely run into one every five minutes or so.
• Story
  • The last thing that could save this game falls just short, unfortunately
  • The opening act is solid and gets you invested in the story
  • The middle act is terrific, Panam and Takemura have awesome questlines that were a blast to experience
  • The ending act is terrible. They clearly had to cut tons of content they intended to include in the middle acts that would have changed the ending. It's incredibly unsatisfying, on the level of Game of Thrones Season 8.
  • I really enjoyed the middle section, but again, you can't make a good story with just a rising action; if the payoff is garbage, it takes away from everything that came before it.
  • The final boss feels like what a mini-boss ought to have been. Though you've heard of this character and seen him once or twice, the final boss doesn't really have the proper build-up to feel like a real antagonist
  • Hate to say this, but unironically the best ending seems to be (spoiler): suicide, where V shoots themself.In the other endings, you kill tons of people and possibly sacrifice multiple of your allies, and that turns out to be in vain because V has been doomed to die the entire time anyway. There's nothing else about the other endings that makes them worth it - V doesn't even get to say an emotional goodbye to Johnny or anything that would have made them satisfying.
• Other
  • Keanu Reeves was miscast for his role as Johnny. Johnny is an egotistical, rebellious asshole, and while Keanu's visage is great, his voice acting is terrible. It detracts from your ability to take Johnny seriously.
  • The game is constantly telling you that things are bad (corps control the world!) but it rarely shows you them actually doing anything evil.

I'd recommend skipping this, possibly even if/when they fix the balance issues, the massive amount of bugs, and the poor performance. There's just nothing that Cyberpunk does particularly well; it does a mediocre job at some things and a shitty job at the rest.