Cyberpunk 2077

While I'm mostly enjoying my time in Night City, I'm finding myself sad and let down by how hollow it has begun to feel. I waited 8 years(!!) and hadn't been so hyped about anything in ages, based on all the amazing features CDPR touted. But I'm left with a lot of ?'s and disappointments. Where are the NPC's with daily schedules to bring life and depth to the world? I can't even make a 360 and guarantee that the character that was standing behind me is still there, or even the same person. I chased a car for a few minutes and everytime I looked away from the driver and back, it was a completely different NPC. There's absolutely no permanence to the "life" in the game, except for the cops outside your door who are forever standing there over a perp and offer nothing to your experience. Why did a cop instantly appear behind me when I shot that rando, even though there was no one else there? Why can't my car or quest NPC's navigate to me unless I'm not looking at them? It's almost like they're cheating instead of having competent mesh path-finding. What happened to "all the cars are unique/customized"? Why do 80% of the other cars around me become the same model as mine? Why are there 4 of the exact same NPC standing near each other in the same room? Why did CDPR patch out my ability to run around nude if I choose? Why must I be offered a car every 5 minutes? Why can't I NOT answer a call? Why is that forced phone call playing over top of a quest conversation I'm already in? How is that even possible to get by QA, after all these years and delays? Why a whole bunch of other things CDPR boasted about that don't exist? Why must CDPR have such terrible liars as CEOs and "leaders"? Why has CDPR ruined their reputation and made me feel this way about them? WHY? WHY?WHY?! I'm going to give CDPR a chance to fix this debacle, but if CDPR can't deliver on making CP2077 the deep and rich experience they promised, I will never purchase a title from them again. Burn me once...

The game itself is decent and reminds me of deus ex and watch dogs. But the game has so many problems, bugs, glitches, performance issues. It feels like a protoype instead of a beta or full complete game. The game feels even more broken than a protoype. Development began 2012 and it's not even completed at this point. For me the version on my xbox one x feels plays a little bit better than the pc version, altough still performance issues and issues. They need to release a lot of updates to fix this game. On pc i experienced too many problems somehow. Couldnt progress in the story because i couldnt talk to a person. Texture pop-ins all the time, performance issues and so much more. Messed around with nvidia control panel, in-game graphics and the second playthrough (again from the beginning) i didn't see the texture pop-ins in normal difficulty. But still performance issues and other problems. This game is for me unplayable at the moment.

So after putting 100+ hours into the game I have come to the conclusion that the game is in such a state that I really cannot recommend buying it. I would honestly give it another 3-4 months of patches and come back later when it's probably half the price. That's all I can say really. Once you've completed the main story and most of the side missions, there's nothing to do apart from drive around looking at the scenery. There's no mini-games, no repeatable quests/activities you can do and really nothing that would make you want to come back to it once you've done the story and side quests, which is a shame because the world looks amazing at ultra settings, truly is a beautiful world, but it's just empty and lifeless. Tl;dr, play something else for a few months as this game still needs time in the oven.

The quick version. Is Cyberpunk 2077, from a gameplay & story perspective, a good game? Yes. Do I recommend buying it? No. As it stands right now there are just too many issues and unfortunately the response to some of those have been quite poor. Once the huge selection of bugs have been taken care of the game will be up at 4 stars, however some mechanical changes would have to be made to get it up to 5 stars. 1. Fix the harmful perks Perks like Auto-dismantle & knife throw are less than useless, they are active drains on you. Auto-dismantle doesn't discriminate between standard junk items, junk items designed for sale, and unique junk items; it just scraps them all for the standard amount of crafting components. I didn't even know this was a thing till people mentioned it. A new char using the sellable items has way less money problems. Knife throw is how you lose a legendary knife for no reason. 2. Allow us to change our character's look & object looks in-game. You can't even get tattoos or change your hairstyle. Further "Style is everything in night city" but I'm forced into weird piecemeal armor if I want good stats & mods, and I can't make my gun match my outfit. 3. Better weapon customization. Mods & sights are cool and all but that's basically where the customization ends. Muzzles are just for silencers and only good if your doing stealth as they reduce your damage and that's it. No Magazine types, no stock changes, no compensators, nada. 4. More weapons. Maybe its because I'm more of a Shadowrun guy then a Cyberpunk guy when it comes to the board games and such, but I like having a bunch of weapon choices. Dialing in on the perfect combo of looks, function, and feeling is great but you don't get that here. You want to use automatic pistols? you've got one option. Assault rifles? One burst fire, two full autos. Machine guns? One light, one heavy. Everything past that is either special gear or just higher level versions with limited special abilities.

Let me start with: If you have 0 expectations because you didn't follow this game and/or watched any marketing material, then buy it and you'll have a blast. Ignorance is bliss after all. + The story is great albeit is too short with the feeling of time passing by without time jumps and too often unfinished business which results in vagueness if not plotholes. + Gameplay is fun and satisfying. + Graphics and music is jaw dropping good, sound are good but requires bit more work. - RPG elements and features are lacking if not completely missing. - PC keybinds missing, cant disable doubletap dodge - Balance and difficulty is all over the place, game is too easy on hardest difficulty, AI is accurate enough but doesn't use enough "tools" in combat, stealth is too easy because of generous openings, player can easily boost their damage trough the roof, main story feels less epic because enemies don't scale as high as other enemies outside. - Bugs, lack of polish Hopefully CDPR will fix this and add more contents...but it will take time.