Cyberpunk 2077

The graphics are pretty impressive and the atmosphere is very thick. I don't think I have ever played a game that drew me into it's world so completely. Unfortunately there are many things that take me out of it again. The game has definitely been released prematurely, but while bugs can be fixed eventually, the game suffers from a few problems that run much deeper than that. The most obvious one is the lack of meaningful choices. You are pretty much on a set path and your dialogue choices barely matter. Even in side missions you are often prevented from really making a choice. This extends to the gameworld which has a surprising lack of interaction. You can't change your appearance in game at all and the options are fairly limited, which is very strange for cyberpunk which is all about style. You can't eat or drink at bars or shops outside of scripted missions and there isn't really anything to do besides shoot people and buy things. You'd think there'd at least be some arcade minigames or a matrix to jack into, but all you get are a few websites with a couple text entries. Lore only comes in the form of collectible text files. Which brings me to my biggest problem with the game; It's a looter shooter. This decision is utterly baffling to me as I would have imagined them to stick closer to the Cyberpunk 2020 source. You are constantly collecting, buying, selling and crafting things which feels like a huge waste of my time and actually takes me out of the game quite a bit. Games like Vampire Bloodlines did this a lot better. The skill tree too offers only a few choices I felt where meaningful with the majority being merely increases to your numbers. Some of the earlier visual designs they showed also looked better by comparison, like the character generation, UI and HUD. Cyberpunk 2077 could have been a masterpiece, but unfortunately sabotages itself a little too often. I'm looking forward to fixes and DLC, but it still has a long way to go.

Guns, cars, city, shooting and melee all excellent. The story is awful, characters superficial and easily forgettable, the endings slapped together with duct tape, lines of dialogue borrowed from one lifepath and used in the other lifepaths. A rushed game, not living up to the hype and not bound to get better with patches. If they had spent perhaps another 1-2 years on it, to fix up the story, it would have lived up to the hype. Right now it's basically eurojank. If you get it, try to ignore the story as much as possible.

3 chars over 100 hrs I can confidently say Cyberpunk 2077 has a very serious narrative flaw that ruins the game from a RP immersion perspective. The problem is: following the prologue Heist sequence V has a built in sense or urgency with a week, maybe 2 to live. Things like “wait until the next day,” “wait a few days,” “come back later,” become infuriating. It’s this sense of urgency that makes completing the main story all that much more urgent. From a RP perspective - & I’d like you to put yourself in V’s place for this - why would V bother going around doing seemingly meaningless side quests & gigs? If you had only a week or two left to save your own life would you be going around doing time waster contracts? No! Combine this with the incredibly short main story & you have a disaster. It’s a massive failure in narrative design. Essentially all the side quests & gigs save the Judy, Panam, & Johnny quest lines should narratively take place before the Heist or not at all (given the endings). It just doesn’t make sense as V otherwise & requires massive suspension of disbelief. Combined with a non-existent gang system, poor customization (character, clothes, car), a poorly implemented rep system, lack of replay potential & inevitably it's not a very good game. Replay: There’s hardly any changes between lifepaths except opening & a few dialogue flavor options scattered. Til the end none of your choices matter. Saints Row 3 did everything this game tries but way better - & it was a parody. Removal of 3rd person, unforgivable. Forcing on of underwear despite disabling nudity filters & choosing genitalia rather than the censor is insulting (shower in panties even!). Blocking of macros and a bad crafting/upgrade system is horrid - hold a button 2 seconds 40+ times for many items? Just no. Character customization is bad. Can't tweak settings - it's just presets with very limited colors. The "big" (tiny) penis size is a joke seeing the huge dildos in the game.

It's hard to rate a game positive if it's broken. Few game updates came but I still get crash reports and can't play it at all. Tried updated drivers, windows, reinstaled game, set low graphics and etc. I hope they will fix it soon and I would change my mind about this game...

CDPR released an unfinished game engine demo, not a game. I dig the art style and the music though, so props to the artists, composers and designers. Maybe in a couple years they will manage to deliver on some promises they have made.