Cyberpunk 2077

I'd really like to take a moment to appreciate CDPR for releasing their games on DRM free clients like GOG. It hurts to know that AAA game devs spend millions on DRM (which eventually get hacked), that money which could have been spent on developing a better game. I will always support CDPR for the stand they take when it comes to DRMs. I am running a decent gaming rig with a Ryzen 9/32GB RAM/GTX 1080Ti/Win 10 Pro x64. The game runs flawlessly. This is the 1st game that sets the graphics to Ultra on a 2 yr old GPU. I always had to use in game benchmark to get a better FPS. It worked like a charm out of the box. It has been optimized well for PCs. The game itself is quite overwhelming at first, it throws a lot of gadgets & upgrades at you, but you get the hang of it in a couple hours. There are a few mission bugs, but always save manually, before and after a mission till CDPR sorts these bugs. This is a huge game so it may take them anywhere between 2-3 months so be patient please. The shooting is fantastic, the upgrades that you select really mean something and are not just visual upgrades. There are a lot of ways you can meaningfully customize your character. The steath could have been better IMO, but who would play this game in stealth? It's like giving GTA to someone and telling them you can't be leathal in the game... lol. The main story is short, but the side missions are the cream of this game where you need to spend hours and hours before you switch back to the main campaign. One thing I really want CDPR to add to all their games is game profiles, at least two or three. For people in third world countries, having more than one gaming rig at home is rare, let alone buying two copies of the same game. I would really like it if they do bring in user profiles so my brother and I can play this simultaneously without messing up each others saves. Plus, I would love to play this game parallelly using the different lifepaths.

+ Quests; main ones are long and interesting; side have such interesting surprises + Night City; you can tell how much time they must have put designing this neon dystopia + Graphics (PC; provided you have at least 2080Ti or 3070 to see it in all of it's glory + Sound; weapons sound "pounchy"; music is great, especially ambiental during certain missions or plot areas + many likeable NPC-s + relationships development (both with people you care about and progress with mr. Breathtaking + happy it kept the Deus Ex vibe even when being an open work game + leveling system upgrade from W3 - many, many glitches (didn't have a single crash and game-breaking bug in my 70h luckily - performance; even with Nasa PC there are areas where it drops into high 30-s at 2K - main story is about 10h too short - not enough very deep dystopian philospohical issues (there are some) - A.I. of NPC-s and traffic (just feels like they were cutting corners

Is it perfect? nope. Is it good? yep :)

I have been playing since launch and love this game. The story is amazing. The quests have a lot of variety. The voice acting is phenominal. Most amazing is player choices actually make a difference thorughout and when an npc says "I'll remember that" it is actually important unlike most games. And while some of the pc controlls feel a bit clunky, I have gotten used to them. I'm for sure looking forward to the patches and DLC and recomend the game to anyone who likes rpg games with some 'pew-pews' and 'vroom-vrooms' to give it a try. For refference I'm playing on the low graphics settings becuase my video card is ~5 years old, and it still looks amazing. Since this is before the patches to come, I have encountered a couple small bugs, but nothing game breaking. The main ones I've had was cars or npc's doing something weird, like jackie walking through my car at one point or my car getting stuck in the road, but nothing even close to the dumpster fire that was 76 at launch... or even now. The one thing that does bug me is the spawning mechanics for the police, becuase they show up litteraly right behind you and... I mean.... come on. But I'm hopeful that and the controlls will get ironed out by either a patch or a mod in the future so it's all good to me. Great job CDPR!

What I mostly care about in games of this kind is the story, and this is what I'll review. [Structural story information below, spoiler free.] The story is amazing. It keeps to the punk genre, contrasting despair, corruption and evil with hope and humanity. It is deep, complex, and gut-punches without mercy. After finishing Act 1, I had to close the game down and spent the rest of the evening taking in what I've experienced. The very next quest (optional, but main quest-adjacent) I play reframes a lot of what Act 1 was about, detailing the personal circumstances, motives, and deepening the characterisation of those portrayed before. No character with more than 5 minutes of story is shallow. It is a narrative experience I haven't had, at this scale, since Planescape: Torment (I still believe it to have the better story, but Cyberpunk sure fought its best). Witcher 3 had these amazing story moments in Hearts of Stone and the Bloody Baron quest chain. Cyberpunk 2077 maintained some 5 hours of amazing story in the first act alone. I find myself thinking about the story, trying to piece it together, empathise with characters, trying to explain their motives. I choose quests not because of convenience or possible rewards, but because I want to explore a character's motives or continue a storyline. There was a difficult, involved questline with easier alternatives which I refused to let go because I cared too much about the character I was trying to save. I haven't experienced that level of stubborn determination in a game since deciding to get all the cryotrays in Homeworld 1. I care. I deeply care. Other than the story: the gameplay is good and satisfying, the gunplay starts feeling very loose but gets better as I get better weapons and skills, melee combat is satisfying, stealth is functional and fun, but no Thief. Quickhacking shines as well-made and super fun. I play a non-lethal stealth-hacker and the game is a blast.