Cyberpunk 2077

After the 100th time of experiencing some kind of bug all of the good parts just don't matter anymore. Seriously the people who are going around claiming they experienced no bugs in this game are lying through their teeth because about every 20 mintues you will see some kind of bug, some will be game breaking and some will just be immersion breaking. To point one specific bug out the devs obviously didn't make the enviroment with the jump enhancing cyberware in minnd because you can go out of bounds in various places with just the double jump and after about the 10th time of getting insta killed from an inbounds object the game didn't expect you to be on you start to get really frustrated. Even after 3 patches the game is still buggy as hell and it's obvious its going to take several months to fully fix the game up the way it should of been released in the first place if it is even going to get to the point at all, it is that bad. Despite how the game was marketed Cyberpunk 2077 is in no way a CRPG. Life path choices only influence certain dailog options but none of the dailog selections in this game influence anything about the story. It's just like Fallout 4 where you can say different things get at most a few different lines of dailog but it just ends up with the same result. There's are redemable factors about Cyberpunk, with the skill tree, cyberware, various different weapons and clothing along with mods for those respective items Cyberpunk has the systems in place for in depth character builds and a variety of ways you can play. And although there isnt really any branching paths in Cyberpunks story what is there is written fairly well and the characters are some of the most fleshed out characters I've seen in a game it's just to bad you have to trudge through all this garbage to get to the good stuff.

... so why the 3 stars you might ask yourself? Well, apart from horrible performance, glitches and bugs, Night City is beautifully designed, graphics, also characters and some quests are really good. But as what this game was actually advertised... a RPG (!) with a breathing, living world, it is just bordering on fraud or scam. I am only halfway through the story (40h in), but judging from other reviewers, the game will not offer more than what I already experienced in terms of gameplay mechanics. And here is were the game mainly falls short, seeing generously over bugs atm.: What are my issues: - Balancing problems: Even playing on hard as a netrunner/sniper build, after getting certain perks or weapons, you can almost one-shot or one-hack enemies and be done with it. Game is a breeze with it. And not end-game, but midgame like in my case - No Interactivity with the gameworld - sub-standard wanted system: the wanted system in the style of GTA is a joke: NPCs spawn randomly behind you and forget you if you run 100 meters - player choice and consequence: Also a heavy part of advertisement, it seems the initial different lifepaths have no consequence apart from a different 30 min intro. Also choices in main story missions maybe influence the occasional conversation or two and partly ending, but Id say 85 % of the game plays out the same no matter what you do. A big load of BS - Crafting and customization is very basic and horrible in terms of user experience and also makes no sense (why does a bandana give more armor than a full on helmet or bullet proof vest?) Quote: CDPR "The whole game is going to be a meme" Well, this certainly didn't age well It is an okay game all around but it could be amazing because it has SO MUCH POTENTIAL. This is what makes me really angry as it is apparent there were some corners to cut, things to drop, etc. Very disappointed in this company, feel sorry for the actual devs. Mod-Community to the rescue? Who knows...

The city itself is really nice to look at. Parts of the combat experience is really good as well (I played and enjoyed a hacking build - but had to switch mid game because it became boring). Voice acting is mostly great as well. But it is clearly not a finished product. Some features (mostly revolving around AI) are basic/placeholder. Games that came out almost 20 years ago have better AI. One zone in the city barely had any gigs in it, I'm guessing they did not have time to polish it properly. There have been also some questionable design choices - like you can pick up the same lore shard from a lot of locations. I really enjoyed reading them at first, but once I started getting more duplicates than new ones, I started ignoring them. A different map marker for each car you can purchase (without the ability to hide them) made it annoying to find actually gigs/jobs. For some reason, you are also unable to not track any jobs. Using the notification shortcut to open a message does not open the panel on that specific message, so you need to find it. And the panel full of contact I do not need/do not answer when called, making it a pain.

This game is trash. Lost respect for the devs shipping this.

Let's get the elephant in the room out of the way early: This game doesn't run well. Not only can the performance lurch down into base PS4 levels on a 3700x/2080 combo, but the glitches break the immersion at best and break the gameplay at worst. However, all of that can be fixed with patching. What can't be fixed is how lackluster the game is. I was expecting something along the lines of an open-world Deus Ex game, but instead got a bunch of window dressing on top of an unholy combination of Fallout 4 and Destiny. The 'RPG' elements boil down to a level system, a terribly uninspired and unintuitive skill tree system, and looter shooter guns. The dialogue is well written, but there's not much way for player choice in dialogue (Yes and [sarcastic] yes sound familiar?), making it feel like I'm playing a predefined character rather than a customized player avatar like the character creation screen would lead me to believe. A lot of the defenses I've heard boil down to the game being so ambitious and large in scope that they couldn't possibly polish everything. Perhaps therein lies the problem. The open world doesn't really add much to the game aside from some, again, window dressing and some optional sidequests, so maybe scaling down Night City a bit would've given the team a bit more focus. After all, I find it pretty hard to be immersed by a huge city when half of the people in it glitch out. As for positives, the gunplay feels pretty nice a lot of the time. The story is very well written, even if Keanu kinda phones it in as Johnny most of the time, and a lot of the characters are endearing. The game also looks great when it's cooperating, however scarcely that might be, and to their credit, it hasn't crashed on me yet. In conclusion, CDPR definitely tried to make a good game and it shows in the bright spots, but unfortunately it fell flat. Time will tell if they get it polished, but even then, there's fundamental flaws deeper than glitches. Go play Deus Ex.