Cyberpunk 2077

First half of the main story is pretty great, the second half is sub par. Can't make the decisions you want to make. Can't kill some people even though they are the biggest ass holes in the game. Even in dialogue there are instances where you have the option to say Yes or No but if you pick one it tells you to pick the other choice. Lots of freedom there. The second half of the main story is so much of a railroad you might as well just give me a 2 hour cutscene. This is coming from someone who has put over 250 hours into the Witcher 3 throughout multiple play throughs. I love that game and how the choices actually matter. This game does not live up to the same freedoms you get playing the Witcher. Other that there are a few bugs, mostly visual or physics bugs, but nothing broke my game like some players have claimed. I don't care so much about bugs, they will be ironed out. One thing this game does have going for it is how pretty it is, it really is beautiful and with better AI the city would feel really alive, but it doesn't because the AI is garbage. Writting is pretty good albeit a little cringy sometimes, voice acting is actually really good and so is the character modeling. I don't know what to do here because I want to like this game and had a blast for this first 20hrs but the fact that your freedom is basically ripped away from you halfway through the game is jarring and it just feels like the team didn't have enough time to create the different paths you should be able to go down. Hell, if I want to kill eveyone whos trying to help me then let me do that, V won't solve the problem (s)he's facing and V's ending will be different.

-Horrible pop-in. Extremely unoptimized even on lower settings. -Life paths are shallow. -Many stats and perks are simply non functional. -AI somehow gets beat out by a game made in 2005, F.E.A.R.. -"Non-lethal" options are almost always just lethal. -Save corruption being associated with "only" abusing dups is a flat lie, you can still very easily corrupt your save just leveling crafting normally and being ocd with looting. -To make matters worse, the requirements to upgrade scale massively, so you need a huge amount of crafting mats, compounding the save corruption issue. -Innumerable collision bugs with vehicles. -Parts of the map are just completely missing and obviously unfinished. I can keep going, but it's a pointless endeavor, this was clearly rushed to be put together in less than a couple years, there is no way this was in any meaningful development for 8 YEARS and be this unfinished and broken. I'm disappointed in the devs because with their track record they should be able to do better, but I'm more angry at the childish management that led them to how cyberpunk ended up. No amount of pandering, dumb streamer self inserts or token celebrity cameos was going to save this or make up for the lack of substance. Maybe I'll revises this in a couple years, but I'm not optimistic.

I am writing this at the time of patch 1.06 with 50+ hours spent in game The good: - Character customization - I Like the story, but the play has no real influence to the ending The bad: * Confusing and useless Perks. I have stopped thinking about how to spend my points about halfway in the game. * Stealth is borken, once detected, the enemies never return to "idle/patrol" state so the player is forced to go guns blazing, thus making Combat always the sole option. Maybe one can reload a save, but that breaks immersion. * By upgrading a weapon or cloth via crafting, it still won't reach the level of the higher level drops from enemies. So my character looks always unappealing just for the better stats. * Missing AI of police, they will spwan immediately behind you and attack randomly just for getting close enough to police officer in the street * Driving cars with keyboard is nearly impossible

The only thing going great for Cyberpunk is its main story and the side quests. Everything else pulls down on quality destroying any goodfaith developed by CDPR over the years. Artists are the only people who did their job, I salute all the character, enviroment and concept artists, the animators and Inhouse sound artists, the writers, vfx and lightnight artists. Those guys did their job. Who failed miserably are the system game designers, world designers, AI devs and most of all the producers of the game. Noone had the balls to stand up to radical changes the game went through in the last 2 years, because it seems at some point everything but artwork was scrapped and remade to tailor some new narrative, which I suspect is the chase behind the GTA 5 Online monitisation success. How did the game lose the core game design mechanics over the 8 years? - Driver AI - Races with dynamic pilots instead of pre-recorded paths and respawn script based on sitance - NPC AI and faction interaction - World spawn state retainer, allowing for cars to appear/despawn only when they are trully out of player's view. - The abysmal DPS leveling mechanic for item - Mobile game style crafting and upgrade system - Random item stat rolls forcing a hobo look - Generic Ubisoft side quests and activities - Missed opportunities in region introduction when fixers instead of inviting you to talk to them first and get a feel for what values they stand for just call you once you enter their are and spam you with 5 cars for sale immediately after. I was glad to finish all the endings after 120 hours to be done with this trashcan on fire. The only time I had fun was the main story and tailored side quests, everything else was agony I had to force myself through. Skyrim taught us how to do the open world right, why are we still failing.

Ok, the good and bad: Good - - Looks amazing if you can afford the hardware - City itself is really well designed, a marvel to look at - Car design, in and out, is top notch - Writing and Dialogue are good - Mike Pondsmith cameo - Tarot cards, would totally buy a deck if available IRL - Johnny Silverhand - Double Jump Bad - - There really is too much potential wasted. Why do police spawn around me when I commit a crime? Why isn't there a bounty system? Why does my car spawn inside walls / other cars? Why can't I pick up 1/6 of the items in the world due to some LoS bug? Why isn't there any visual / audio feedback for the player with the cooler perks like Coldblood? What is the point of having all food and drink offer the same pointless buffs? What is the point of food stalls if you can't sit down and immerse yourself, if there is infinite food litering the ground? Why can't I order a Jackie Welles or a Johnny Silverhand at Afterlife? Why does crafting anything of value require significant point placement in perks and attributes when it would be better to use the legendaries you find and other better perks? Why can't a change my character's appearance after creation? Why are most cyberware mods just background stats? Why isn't there a cyberware surgery scene outside the tutorial? Why do my items show as 0 armor or 0 dps in storage? Why do my upgraded weapons reset after certain missions? Where are all the futuristic super drugs? Why aren't there different playstyles for choices like a corpo start going more pro-corpo? All in all, as an action adventure game, Cyberpunk is interesting and fun at times, even if it is extremely buggy. As an RPG, Cyberpunk is a serious dissapointment, and often an outright failure in design. You will find better immersion, character choice, and self expression elsewhere.