Cyberpunk 2077

This game attempts to be what I, and many people have been wanting for a long time. It tries blend action adventure, immersive sim, RPG, and shooter genres into something greater. Unfortunately it falls short in many areas. The Good: -The main story and many of the bigger side quests are great for the most part, despite some pacing issues. -Johnny Silverhand is great, and it's fun interacting with him and hearing/responding to his takes on situations. -If your computer can handle it, the game really is "breathtaking" visually. -Sound design is the best in any game I've ever played (using Dolby Atmos for Headphones) - incredibly immersive. The Meh: -Aforementioned pacing issues with the main quest - it feels like you're being pulled urgently towards the end, and it doesn't make much sense contextually to be doing a lot of side content. -Side quest quality is very hit-and-miss. -A lot of repetetive "clear this area" content, though a good chunk has voice acting. -Very few non-"killing" world activities. -V is fairly generic. Male voice acting is solid. Lifepaths are mostly irrelevant except for occasional knowledge flexing to NPCs during quests. -Balance isn't great - hard early game (good IMO), too easy mid-to-late game. Played on Very Hard. The Bad: -Very buggy. -Poorly optimized - not really playable on "minimum" specs. -Most choices lack meaningful consequence. -Loot grind system, with too much crap, and poor UI for dealing with it. -Gear stats prevent dressing for fashion. -Police AI is atrocious for a game released in 2020. -General AI (crowds/cars), seems alright in passing, but doesn't hold up to any level of scrutiny. -Combat AI can't deal with many player actions (eg. abusing corners/funneling enemies). Despite many being angry about the delays, this is why games shouldn't be rushed. A lot of these problems could be improved/fixed with another 6-12 months of development. Hopefully they will continue to work to improve it for a long time post-launch.

At the time of wrting this review I have almost 20 hours into the game and all I can say is I don't recommend it. (Warning, spoilers ahead) 1) There's a ton of bugs - but yes, those can and probably will be fixed. 2) The AI in the game is atrocious, enemies charge you mindlessly or stand in the open just to get shot, the police spawns right next to you, but completely forget your existence if you drive 20 meters away. The civilians are not interesting - feels like it's a 2005 game in the regard of enemy/civilian AI. 3) The choices don't really matter, and the backstory is not engaging. You get barely a few minutes to introduce you to the backstory of your chosing (one of three), in each of them you quickly get to meet jackie, and then you get a super-cut of all the fun activies you did together... but you don't get to actually do them. So nor the backstory nor the friendship with Jackie is at all captivating. 4) The game doesn't run very well, on a mid-end pc like mine I'm averaging around 40fps with all minimal settings. Overall while yes I am having fun playing it - if I had all the information I do now when I preordered it - I wouldn't do it, and I can't advise anyone else to spend 60euros on a game in this state.

Story so far is very cool but performace and bugs are sometimes so prominent it's a bit dissapointing. But bugs can be fixed, so I'd still recommend the game to a friend, just not in this state. Here are the bugs that were really bugging me : - Sound bug : I use head set. Conversations are pretty normal, the shooting is a bit loud but radio and TV stations are very quiet despite being at 100% in setting. Sometimes ambient sound is SO LOUD I can barely hear the characters speak. Changed setting from studio preference to headset a few times no difference. Reinstalled audio drivers, no difference. So maybe this can only be fixed by patch. - Performance : With an i9900k, RTX 2070 8GB and 16GB of RAM you'd think this game would run decent on High. Nope, sitting between 30-50 fps sometimes going to 20fps. Thought I should try on low aand nope still down to 30fps at times. Mind you not ALL the time, highest fps is 80. and When in Badlands it never dipped below 50 even with shooting and explosions. Reinstalled driver and stuff, did nothin'. - Near game-breaking bugs. Some places you can vault through solid glass that can't be shot and broken. So now you're stuck where ever you landed and are forced to reload. Some bugs are quest related so I won't be posting them here. My greatest convern rightnow is the sound bug. I really want to be able to hear the radio stations in the car or on the motorcycle. When I drive I can't hear it because the engine is louder than the radio so sometimes I need to stop but even if I do it's still very quiet. hope they fix.

It's a really good RPG. I can't stop playing it in fact. But the game is buggy as hell. Like game breaking buggy. Like choppy broken animations on the regular. Severe clipping car disappearing into the highway buggy. In addition the A.I. feels kind of stupid. Jackie would reload every shot he took. Which was just irritating. Hostiles would get confused easily as well. There's a lot of things that I wish were present. Stuff that I feel is a given. Colours in character customization. For seemingly arbitrary reasons you can't select one of the bog-standard 16.7 million colours one would assume you'd have access to. This made me legitimately sad. I could not express myself in the character creation tool properly. Monster Hunter: World did that flawlessly imo. You could actually recreate yourself so extensive those tools were. Another thing. key mapping. let me do whatever the f**k i want. please. don't decide for me. FOV. 120. that is all. thank you. i'm not a critic. i don't know how to make a good article with useful pointers. this is just my two cents. give me a break. :)

I will start with the good: The work that CDPR artists put into Night City is impressive. The city is detailed and exciting. Unfortunately, the city acts as a barely interactive backdrop for a simple looter-shooter—a very, very buggy looter-shooter with a somewhat linear story and often repetitive side quests. If you have read other reviews, you have read about the bugs, the problems with mouse/keyboard controls, and the performance problems. These issues may be fixed in the future. What is worse is all the missing features and content in the game. Vehicle customization? Not in the game. Destructible environment? Nowhere to be found. Believable NPCs? Only in scripted sequences; otherwise, it is cars on predefined routes, teleporting police and a degree of interactivity and believable world-building that games from the nineties, like Ultima, on MS-DOS, did better. All in all, I regret to have preordered this game. Wait for the Game of Year Edition and pass the time with better cyberpunk games. I would advise Deus Ex as a better first-person stealth/hacking game with a more interesting story, fewer cut scenes, and more impactful cyberware.