Cyberpunk 2077

As much fun as i'm having playing this game, it is clearly in a beta state. This game has so many QoL things it could have done, that games have been doing for decades. It has so many bugs at launch, that I had to double check that it was really made by CDPR. Very disappointing. 1. Inventory Management: Why is there no Favorite system, Sell-All button(that ignores equipped/favorited items), Multi-sell toggle(hold shift while clicking in a store and it sells that stack without popping up the slider), multi crafting.....so many systems that have been in games for decades didn't make it in to this. 2. Clarity: I legitimately still don't know if Perks that affect Shotguns, affect Tech Shotguns. There is so much about this game that is not clear. I even put a point into increased damage in shotguns to check it, and none of my shotguns in my inventory had their DPS update. NONE OF THEM. So I can't even test it in game. 3. Bugs: There are constant bugs in game; visual overlay getting fucked up, clipping through walls, quests just stopping and the list goes on. Many of them can be fixed with a re-load or restart, yet it's very annoying. All in all, this is a very disappointing launch from a company I trusted enough to do my only pre-purchase in years. This feels like every other greedy launch from a AAA company, putting out un-finished crap 6-12 months too early. Again, i'm enjoying my time, and yet this is not what I expected from a company I trusted and thought cared about their customers.

What frustrates me the most is probably the AI and physics. Here are some examples. Cops: they just spawn right behind you (even when you are in a dead end) after you attack a NPC with no witnesses. No tracking your path in a car or something. Just... spawn behind you. Driving NPC: when you stop your car in the middle of the road, they use the horn and never try to move around it. Pull a gun towards them for 1 sec. They just do the scary pose and never actually do anything anymore. Ragdoll?: Try driving near some NPCs. When you are about to hit them (but haven't), they roll and dodge then glitch to the side of your car and continue to walk. Even when you hit them, there's almost like you didn't hit anything because the impact is so little. There are also many bugs and glitches in the game. But I believe those can be fixed pretty quickly with patches. I don't know how or how long you are gonna finish/redo the features that should have been there right from the start. I am talking about features that have existed in some 10/20 years old open world games. Sigh.

After ten hours trial and error my advice is to wait for a few more patches (post 1.04) before buying. Bugs are gradually being worked out but some in-mission bugs still remain and there are still plenty of graphical glitches (floating cans NPC pop-ins and T-posing). Sound doesn't seem to work, either files are missing or not triggering correctly, particularly on TVs; radio stations and dialogue have issues with ultra-low volume when not in a cut scene. Keyboard and Mouse support is not yet fully implemented, Devs state that the game was designed to run with a controller but the state of Keyboard and Mouse control is unforgivable, e.g. not being able to walk is a pretty major faux pas as is hard coding key mappings. From what I have experienced, the story and side quests are solid and enjoyable. It's a real shame that a graphically and story rich experience is ruined by control issues and audiovisual bugs and omissions. Wait a few patches or until reviews say its 'safe to play' on PC

Unfortunately, despite how much I wish it weren't true, this game suffers from problems almost across the board. Aside from the now well known bugs/performance isues (which are inexcusable in a full price release) the core game just feels like it was cobbled together at the last second. The gameplay itself is thoroughly mediocre at best, with unimpactful gunplay and an incredibly barebones stealth system ripped straight from every other stealth game ever. Hacking is just kinda there. The world does look incredible, but once you stop to look at what's going on around you you'll quickly realise that NPC's and vehicles have no emergent behaviour, they simply walk/drive around on rails with no interaction with the world whatsoever. Within the first hour of the game this already left night city feeling empty, a hollow shell that the devs were never given the time to fill. A quick summary of a few of the games other weaknesses are it's less than excellent driving, relatively bland characters, lack of objectives other than kill x or press E on y and a waaaay overcluttered UI. The biggest dissapointment for me, however, is undoubtedly the RPG elements of this game, or rather the lack of them. For how much CDPR talked about choice in the marketing of this game I'm baffled as to how few actually impactful choices there are at all. The life paths are completely linear stories with no effect on later V other than some occasional fluff dialogue choices, and if this was the intended way for this to work it was massively oversold. Ultimately this game falls well short of the most important benchmark of all, it's worse than the Witcher 3 in almost every way.

Missing most of the things that were promissed over the past 6 years. Right now, it's hardly worth playing even for the story. How was it even considered to be released in this state? It's a buggy-mess with next to none of the substance or depth that was promissed repeatedly.