Cyberpunk 2077

I'd love to actually play the game but so far none of the fixes have worked for me and judging by the forum, I'm not the only one. I'll gladly change the review once they fix these bugs but so far I can not use the product that I bought.

This game had a lot of promise, the Witcher series built a very solid base of trust with the devs and the fans. We expected what they delivered in the previous games. The pros -when textures load right (looking at you car textures) the game looks really gorgeous -the world of the game is designed with so much care and you do notice when roaming around -Lore is amazing -Music sure helps with getting into the game when the gameplay and visuals fail to do so -Panam Cons I wont talk about the bugs, that's the smaller issue by far with the game, and I was lucky enough that barely encountered any besides lighting issues which patches fixed quickly. But as far as story and gameplay... Witcher 1 was even more fleshed out than this, in that game your choices at least mattered and we weren't forced into a scripted movie that even deaths were dediced in any car chase. Dialogue sure does not affect your story in the slightlest except if you kill a somewhat important character (as if even was possible). Spent most of my time trying to level up to check out all the stuff in the skill tree... to find that most of the skill tree is % upgrade for stuff you can already do and the other 70% is sitting going through dialogue, really nothing wrong with that, I love visual novels... but this game isn't supposed to be that. Gunplay feels lifeless, even with a sniper rifle doing 2 headshots... the npc wont even die unless you blow their head off. Stealth was enjoyable for the most part but the lack of difficulty with the AI just, rubs me off from keep doing side stuff besides the main quest. The biggest gripe for me... is how the horrible deadlines the devs had to put up with made you realise how much stuff had to be cut off. Just to end up with a story that's barely good, and that's is ignoring the lack of personality fixers have, you can't even go to them to get new side quests. All in all, my trust in CDPR devs is still there, but I will think thrice before buying their next game.

I wanted to love this game but unfortunately, there are one too many flaws in it. Still, I don't actually hate it, I'm just disappointed. Pros: World: Intricately designed to fit the Cyberpunk 2020 world. Clearly a huge amount of work and dedication went into this. Hats off to the developers to have done so much with so few resources and time. Aesthetics: Beautiful if imperfectly rendered at times. A lot of work done here too, obviously. Themes: Very much in sync with our times. Delivers the warnings the Cyberpunk 2020 franchise was supposed to. Cons: Story: close to being a pro but the abuse of the Johnny character and the strong linearity kind of spoil any fun. The general hopelessness and cynicism shown are a personal downside. However, you might like it. Logic: Blatantly illogical (or immoral) choices are often presented as the right ones. This was a flaw in the Witcher games too (sometimes). Clearly someone (or many people) at CD projekt Red have some questionable grasps of logic (and/or morality). Open world aspects: very limited for a game of this scale. Side missions are basically all the same (I'm being a little unfair). I don't count optimisation as a flaw because I know the developers are not at fault here. We all know the release was rushed for many reasons. I just hope the people who worked impossible hours to make the release date have at least been payed accordingly. All in all, it's worth playing, if only to show support for the huge work done by the development team (and CD projekt Red for their DRM free platform) but also, I think, to experience the intricate world that is the setting of Cyberpunk 2077.

Cyberpunk 2077 has an interesting main story and some beautiful moments of immersive storytelling, but it is not the incredible, shoot-for-moon next level RPG with complex mechanics that was advertised. Also for starters, V is not an outlaw, you mostly get paid by the police. What was sold instead of an RPG is a subpar action-adventure open world game filled with a lot of pointless RPG elements, from the crafting, to the leveling system and the insane amount of items you can loot. It fails at being an RPG because choices don't matter, levels don't matter and your gear doesn't really. It also fails at being a GTA clone because it doesn't even offer 1/10th of the diverse activities, jobs, minigames that make Rockstar's cities alive and amazing to cruise through. Your Lifepath doesn't matter except for your 20mn prologue and some dialogue options in the early main quest but it doesn't impact side quests or your possible endings. Also, your background doesn't carry over and V is essentially the same character after the in-game trailer of the all the cool stuff you do for 6 months with your best friend Jackie (who you don't get to play with much). You can blow up things, buy many cars, kill criminals, and follow the main story. What you can't do is buy new condos, tune your car, choose them in stores, play minigames, enjoy cinematics or dialogues in most side quests, see yourself in 3rd person cinematics, pleasantly feel immersed thanks to animations at the ripperdoc or in any shops, you can't interact with NPCs, the police system is terribly implemented and the overall AI sucks. Also the driving is bad. Also, the combat is broken. All in all, sure, the environment is beautiful to look at but it's devoided of the care and attention to detail that made the Witcher III so great. It is a shame that Cyberpunk 2077 is just a cheap shell of what it intended to be because the writing is good and it could have been a better game, had it been handled differently.

I stuck with it as a tabletop fan because I wanted to see how they handled the Johnny storyline... And wow, was I disappointed. The ending doesnt take into account the fact that there are solutions to the big twist that folks like Adam Smasher, Lizzie Wizzie, and others have already utilized. That with enough money and power the situation you are stuck in can be solved. Instead it hamfists an ending where nothing you did actually matters and you have zero impact on the world. A+ for realism I guess.