Cyberpunk 2077

The prologue of CP2077 really sucks you in. But after 8 hours or so, once you're off your leash, you can start seeing the seams in the grand illusion. Walking the streets feels like being on a movie set. All the stores are closed and locked. Very few merchants even sell anything (the guy at the noodle stand asks "Do I know you?" instead of trying to sell me noodles. The NPC AI is nonexistant. Car AI is nonexistant. I'd like to compare CP2077 to another open-city RPG that just released. Yakuza: Like a Dragon. In this game, a "real RPG", you explore a living, breathing city as an RPG hero while tackling fun and endearing side quests, eating at restaurants, shopping at convenience stores, going to pawn shops to buy new items, making friends at the unemployment office, singing karaoke at your favorite bar, playing arcade games, and generally feeling IMMERSED in this beautiful, living, interactible city. Yakuza: Like a Dragon excels at what CP2077 utterly fails at. Giving you an immersive RPG experience coupled with a beautiful, living, breathing city filled with beautiful vistas, secrets, and a real reason to explore the world and get lost in it. Cyberpunk 2077 absolutely fails in that regard. You can walk around, block after block, not finding a store to walk into and peruse, or find a NPC in need. It's just an illusion. Night City is the most beautiful cardboard cutout ever rendered onto my TV screen. The city is beautiful, but it might as well be one of those old-timey Western movie sets. There's nothing on the other side. What an absolute shame. I implore you; if you want a truly immersive RPG set in a beautiful, living city, pick up the new Yakuza (or Y0, which is regularly $5 on sale) and treat yourself. Maybe come back to Night City in 12-18 months and see if they straightened things out.

When considering the quality of this game I will ignore any bugs that i have run into with this game, numerous as they are, and simply focus on intended design of this games' features. The good: The narrative is interesting, and the world it is placed in is fairly unique, the only game I know that is similar is deus ex. The amount of side quests is suppossed to be very large, and they are apparently great, I wouldn't know though, because I cannot find any. The bad: The main issue I have with this game is that there is actually no redeeming factors at all. Combat is very mediocre, driving is as bad and unineresting as Watch Dogs 1, except without damage models, player character building and crafting are probably the worst features of the game, and exploration is barely rewarding. Combat: This game requires very little skill. In most situations I find myself in a shootout where the main goal is to attack my enemies 1 by 1, so that I can comfortably empty 1 to 3 magazines into their head, and onto the next one. weapon unlocks is pretty pointless, since you will probably be carrying 3 weapons, and there aren't more than 4 or 5 weapon types anyway. They also all handle the same. Driving: Cars are not very controlable, and the ai traffic is so bad they are basically just slow moving obstacles. They don't make driving dynamic at all, and they are nothing but uninteractable blobs of low LOD. RPG elements: I have not crafted or heard about crafting in my first 5 hours, but i have seen the craftable items, and they are some weapons and items that are on par with anything any enemy can drop. Completely pointless. The character skill tree is 99% stat upgrades and a small amount of actual skill unlocks, which makes this very uninteresting. Stealth: Most levels seem not to be made for stealth, but if you do decide to sneak somewhere where ai is too strong to shoot, their gadgets are too high level to hack, so you also cant sneak past them. I only had 2000 words. Don't buy.

Visually good looking, the story is at first intriguing, then you start exploring night city and discover that it is soulless, empty, with terrible a.i., bland npcs, and boring side missions. Grand theft auto 3 had better driving and police mechanics than this game. Pretty disappointed. I fell for the hype, and I'm mad that I trusted a game studio to deliver what they promised. Apparently they are going to fix visual bugs and promise to fix the game for consoles, but even then it will leave much to be desired.

My PC is a good margin above the reccomended specs, and I've actually only had a couple major glitches so far. Considering the potential for the Cyberpunk property, this game is just so bland. An extremely pretty open world that's completely shallow. Imagine Fallout 3 if the only enemies you fought were the plain human wastlanders or drones and the sidequests only came from the same three people calling your cell phone immediately one after another when you walk into a new area. Most of those siequests are just going inside a building to kill the same gang members you've been killing. Over 40 hours in and the only one mission so far that gave me a CHOICE to make was so obvious that one option was "good" and the other option was "bad." The gangs are all the same; mow down every Tyger Claw in the city and then have the Tyger's gang leader text you about a used car. The cyberware augments are a joke, you get one out of four weapon options for you arms and some variation on a double jump for you legs and that's it. Everything else makes as much diffference in gameplay as a new shirt does. The main missions with Keanu Reeves are fun but they're clearly the ONLY thing they put real effort into, so like, why bother with the giant empty world?

This is not the game that was discussed and market the last three years. Half the features that were teased are missing or heavily cut down. It's a large adventure game, but it's certainly missing soul and life. Not sure how this could happen, but I'd recommend staying clear of it for the first year and only pick it up on sale.