Cyberpunk 2077

Great story, just amazing...

As some one coming into it from witcher (with playing one and two before, which was a... disaster before patches) I had not much hope of a great game not because witcher 3 wasn't great but because I am not often invested in modern/scifi settings, and was pleasently suprised by finding a good game. Note I had very few bugs. This is my couple of cents on the game, after trying to wrap my mind around why I like it, but failing. Pros: - Good dialog - Interesting characters - fair shooting mechanics - large world Cons: - Often little time to get invested in characters - Character all have a bit of a style that make very few seem like good guys and I like to root for the good guys (even when my characters is a prick) - Driving feels poor compared to other games (GTA), not bad but I am not driver for the sake of driving. - Interface, skill tree and gameplay feels like it would need a couple of playthrough before finding my style, but doubt motivation is there for more then two playthroughs. - Witcher 3 made jokes in the expansions about the damn candles you light by accident, this is still true. Conclusion: I enjoying it still, but understand why people are frustrated with it. Doesn't stand a candel to Witcher 3. But as someone that plays some scifi/modern rpgs and rarely replays any, having me starting a second playthrough in this game is a win. Makes me want do dig deeper in other rpgs and see what I am missing out on.

Preface: I heard a lot about the bumpy start of the game. So i waited a year until the game was on sale to play it over x-mas in one go. I very rarely buy games when they release anyway, and prefer to not hype myself up beyond reason. Thus i could just enjoy the game for what it is, and suspend my disbelief easily to expirience the story, and not ruin it for myself. Technicality & Bugs: I run a 3900X with a 2080RTX (non super) on 1440p. my poor 2080 struggled a bit running the game but after some hours i managed to dial in stable 70 fps with dlss. I had one crash trough my whole 110h of gameplay right in the last mission where you have no savestates. Beside that, i only encountered bugs or glitches that are common in any other open world looter shooter game of similar kind (borderlands, gta, fallout, skyrim, outer worlds, etc.). Sometimes a weapon was stuck in the ground. Sometimes a car freaked out bc it was stuck in some scenery. Nothing major, never had to reload bc. of it. Story: If you expect a game where you can rollplay whatever you want and the story adapt to it, you will be dissapointed. However, you can make a lot of decissions that will influence the last part of the game. All in all, missions and side missions are very enjoyable and the atmosphere is spot on. Im not someone that tries to forsee any story plot twist to not ruin the expirience for myself. Just accept that you expirience a story, not your own. Gameplay: I like that it doesnt require you to thurrowly plan out your skilltree else you will fail. You can basically build the character any way you like as long as you have a rough idea what you want to do. General: I really enjoyed it. I get that people are mad about what CDPR did prelaunch. And its fair to criticize them for it. But it is just wrong to criticize the GAME for what the PUBLISHER did. The Game itself is totally enjoyable and a very good game, i can fully recommend to anybody interested in Cyberpunk.

Haven't had any problems with performance on my PC(which isn't too beefy, GTX 1060, R5 3600, 1080p w/ HDR on). Sometimes looks a bit rough and the max FOV is a bit narrow but for what I'm used to the graphics look amazing. So far story and exploration has been a blast, the character and weapon upgrades are intuitive, keyboard scheme is okayish but can't be changed(which might actually pose problems for some people) and story even includes some gay representation. Or at least all that could've been fun if they didn't start fucking people like me over at character creation already. I actually got really disgusted by the devs way on how they handle gender. The setting for voice is internally represented as "brain gender"(as seen in crash reports) and triggers male/female pronouns and wording towards V. So instead of what I assumed would just be a woman with a deep voice they just assume "deep voice, must be a guy" and give you the voicelines for guys. This fucking sucks. How you choose your voice(which is already limited enough, only one male/female voice, not even a chance to modulate higher or lower) shouldn't be relevant to how the character is perceived. Like literally, how hard can it be to just fucking ask people for their preferred pronouns in voicelines when you already have so many other different options for the character? I really can't explain something stupid like this other than with malice. I've defended CDPR long enough, but transphobic shit like that just ain't it. But here, let me even give you a solution that takes literally 5 minutes to build: Add Pronoun option, connect it to your "brainGender" property and make a new property for the voice which literally only selects the voice and not the gender. When that's fixed and people don't have to go back after creating their character because CDPR fucked up, this game could actually earn it's 4 stars.

Is this game absolutely perfect? Nope. Could this game do with some additional features? Absolutely? Is this still an amazing & engaging game? Most definitely. I'll get the "negative" stuff out of the way first: -I really had hoped that the intro story would be longer. It would have been great to spend more time in the Badlands before getting to Night City. -The AI is reasonably decent, but could definitely do with some improvement. -Some lifepath specific dialogue could do with more meaningful outcomes, IMHO. -We need more keybind options-especially the ability to toggle walking and running. Now for the good stuff: -I really LOVE the character creator. Whilst more choices would be awesome in later DLC, I definitely felt in full control of creating a truly unique character. -In addition, the RPG elements of the game are completely solid. I really get a truly unique feel from the character I have created, & feel you give me plenty of opportunities to make use of my skill set. -The Characters are amazing. The main characters are really cool to interact with, & their voice acting is wonderful. Even minor NPC's on the street have a certain uniqueness to them, which I love. -The environment. Night City is an amazing location, & so wonderfully realised, it is also immensely packed with stuff to do. I am still stuck in Watson, but I can't help but wander the streets wondering what will pop out at me. -The sound and the graphics are all amazing, as are the gameplay mechanics for Hacking, Gunplay, Melee & Stealth. Its clear a lot of love went into creating this game, in spite of the minor flaws on PC. -This game is truly addictive. I really find it difficult to pull myself away to do something else. Anyway, as a former CP2020 player, can I just say that this is a wonderfully realised recreation of Mike Pondsmith's world overall. Well done!