Cyberpunk 2077 (2020)

uninstalled after playing for around 6 hours. my character is hot af just not hot enough to pull me through this mess. the game just failed to capture my attention at all, though i was lucky enough to be one of the few who didn't catch many bugs. the environment feels empty and boring despite the massive amounts of pedestrians everywhere. there's just nothing to do when you're not in the middle of a quest, which is kind of the essence and soul of open-world games in the first place. i could be wrong and more stuff pops up as you progress, or you become able to hack the neverending sea of locked doors everywhere, but ultimately the game didn't pull me in enough to even want to play up to that potential point.

that's not the only complaint i have, but it's the main one (about the gameplay itself, that is — there's plenty wrong with the development cycle and crunch hours, the limited diversity in the character creator, etc.) and it's a dealbreaker for now. planning to wait for a few patches before attempting to tackle it again.

I’m done with this game for now.

I’ve played about 14 hours on PS5. The game has crashed 7 times and I’ve experienced several bugs, but that is not why I’m stopping. While the main story is engaging enough for me to play it, every other aspect of the game feels unfinished, unpolished, or broken. The open- world city is no better than an early GTA game, where interactions with NPC feels wooden at best, or non existent. The side quests (and this part is probably the most disappointing based on Witcher 3) are boring and repetitive. The shooting is serviceable, but far from exciting, the driving is abysmal and fast traveling is a chore. This feels like a huge step back (PS2 era) in terms of traversal and interaction and most certainly not the next Gen step forward that was promised.

Even though I’m a huge Witcher fan, I had no high expectations for this game, because it’s not really my cup of tea in principle, but I was still expecting a quality product given CDPR’s track record. This game feels like Frankenstein’s monster, at times intriguing and compelling (mostly the main mission) and other times stitched together and broken.

I will try again in half a year or so, when they have done substantial changes.

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.
  • 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.

I am absolutely loving this game as I approach the 30 hour mark and the “point of no return” mission. The story is so cool—the main big act of the game is divided into a few different smaller parallel stories and they all ended really well, a couple in particularly spectacular fashion. Some of the side content is hitting some interesting thematic parallels to that main story and I can’t imagine playing the game without it. Even when the side content goes off on a tangent, it can hit some great emotional notes and offer interesting gameplay experiences.

Some stiff acting aside, Johnny has also become more and more interesting as his role in the game grows, and side characters like Panam steal the show and seem primed to play a big part in the later game if you invest in their storylines.

I still totally love the gameplay as I’m now maxed out on the hacking skill and able to fully clear missions from stealth while never upgrading my actual stealth stat, purely based off the hacking. And that hacking also works in all-out combat when needed, gives me an income source and new ways through levels—feeling really versatile. Guns are feeling great too, particularly a certain beefy handgun used while playing as Johnny and the smart targeting assault rifles.

In many ways, it’s even more than I was hoping for—much more exciting and stylish than The Witcher games as well as more engaging in gameplay and emotionally. Despite being one of the buggier major releases I’ve played, I can’t help but be totally obsessed with it.

Lol, this is a joke at this point, right?

The amount of stupid bugs in this game, particular ones where someone's dick/ass/boobs are hanging out... It's like CDPR was disappointed they couldn't shoehorn edgy lewd stuff into the game enough, so they are letting the bugs do it for them.

I'm exaggerating for effect here, I don't actually think that's what's going on or anything, but it is getting kinda ridiculous... Honestly, I kinda hope CP2077 gets to go down as 'that meh game where no one could keep their pants on'.

You know, I quite like this game, it isn't that bad. You can read my thoughts about it here.

But one thing that has me very intrigued is: Who the fuck gives the driving licenses in Night City?? I mean despite the constant traffic accidents, mad people behind the wheels kind of shit; now, it's actually raining cars?!? From the freeway above... Please, come on. Enough is enough, am I the only one following the fucking traffic lights!! And this is a fucking game!!! Immersion in the world everybody!!!

Given that this is the gaming community we are talking about, this game it's having its fair share of unjustly praise and hate. It's being criticized as severely as its being praised grandiosely. I, however, found myself in the middle of all this crossfire and I would like to give you a couple of thoughts on it.

This game is perfectly good, it isn't great, it isn't the masterpiece nor as revolutionary as Johnny Silverhand aspires to be. It is fun and enjoyable, it is a bit derivative and it does follow that ethos of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". It takes a lot of its cues from Deus Ex, for instance, there's a depth to this game's stealth, not to mention that the level design is as lackluster as it seems at first, it does have multiple ways to tackle and objective, and it gives space for the player's creativity, thing is that Deus Ex does it better, but still, being this a modern AAA game, I am glad that's there. How you can improve your character's cyber-tech is the same as in Deus Ex, but this time with a much more depth and capability to really personalize and make a distinct V. The shooting follows the modern "old-trend" of fast-paced shooters, in the harder difficulties movement is required, and if you like those sort of shooters, it is real fun. Bad side of it however, is that enemies are bullet sponges, it takes more than it should to kill someone, and it makes a contrast with the fast-paced nature of the movement, it becomes more of a nuisance than anything. But if you get hold of a katana -I am playing my Samurai fantasy, a la Frank Miller's Rōnin as I didn't get that much in Ghost of Tsushima- and it all becomes slashing fun. And the dialogue and most RPG stuff, the game follows closely the formula of The Witcher III, and its what it has the most depth, yet hasn't been improved that much. This game, has its bets in other stuff, gameplay wise has bet safe.

One of the things that really worried me, was how much cyberpunk would Cyberpunk 2077 be? And I am very pleased, it does game the basic theme of "high tech and low life", it has the big corporations having much control than the governments, and with some backstory from the radio and TVs spread around the world a nice pinch of flavor is added and the world shows much mor depth. Which it has, this might be the most detailed open-world game I have seen, just as much or even more than Red Dead Redemption 2. It is humongous and everything from the radio stations, to the tiny alleyways, to the TV ads on the many screens, everything has been thought out with all of their tiny details in mind. It's fascinating, however, due to all the bugs and incredibly bad optimization, this side of the game, which is clearly what has taken most of the Dev's attention, suffers the most. Every little bug, every little defect and flaw, screams jarring from the screen, breaking what this game's treasures the most: immersion. Which it is, but at the same time, just as your head is getting into it and starting to live through the dangers of Night City, it's suddenly broken by this awful and broken optimization.

What I do like, perhaps the most, is that Night City isn't Blade Runner's Los Angeles -for that take a look at Bloober Team's Observer-, it isn't Akira's Neo-Tokyo, it isn't Ghost In The Shell's Niihama Prefacture, nor the Washington DC of Spielberg's Minority Report or whatever world Netflix's Altered Carbon takes place in. Night City, has its own identity, it really looks like the West Coast, Los Angeles, Venice Beach; it's bright and sunny, and the world is filled with bright and bold colors. In a rainy night, is when you perhaps can see the most resemblances of the neon-lighted classic cyberpunk metropolis. Although, this game doesn't have a shortage of "cyber", it is very cyber, there has been a conscious effort from CDPR to sway the game into the "punk". The world's visual radicalism is a display of that, and having Johnny Silverhand in your head attests to that. But that comes with its fair share of negatives, specially on Silverhand's part; he oftenly comes through as this edge-lord old-forgotten rockstar, who loves to reminisce his old dears... I know very cringe, and is as ideologically deep as I was, age 14, when I was listening to Circle Jerks, Black Flag, Sex Pistols, and all that shit a stereotypical punk rocker does, with my philosophy of "do it in your own", fuck that mainstream shit and we should set fire to the big Corporations... that is also very cringe. But on the bright side, Silverhand also displays a complexity, I would like to know if later on the game -no spoilers please- this was made intentional, and Silverhand isn't what it seems.

So, here I have given you my thoughts on it. I am really liking this game, glad I didn't had it too hyped, gave it enough space to impress me, and although you can paint me disappointed in many areas, you can also color me impressed in others. Suffice to say, I am not regretting that much, playing this game, it is becoming quite addictive.