Cyberpunk 2077

The game is OK, but nothing special. It has so much potential to be more, but misses the mark in several respects. Aside from some bugs (my playthrough only had a few minor bugs) the other issues are lackluster gameplay, poor balance, missing features, and some weird censorship decisions which seem to have been made just prior to release. The gameplay is is a bog standard shooter with some RPG elements. There are melee and stealth systems, but they're not robust and there's nothing here that you can't find in another game with those features. The balance is terrible - certain categories of weapons are completly overpowered even without getting perks to upgrade them (Tech weapons can pierce through walls and can be charged up to do major damage), others are terrible even if you try to spec into them (such as the Monowire melee cybernetic upgrade, which has no perks associated with it as opposed to the other melee options, and the damage buff you receive from investing in the "Cool" stat is negligible). The world is full of detail and looks beautiful, but you can interact with so little of it that it still somehow ends up feeling empty and lifeless. The vast majority of sidequests are inconsequential. Break in, kill/steal x, then leave. Some of the sidequests have unique dialogue and interactions, and lead to their own quest chains, but nowhere near enough of them, at least in comparison to the Witcher 3. Even the story felt lackluster. Most people seem to be content with the story, but I felt like the story was very frontloaded - there was some great buildup and emotoinal scenes near the beginning of the game which sucked me in, but as the game went on there started to be less and less of this, concluding in one of several endings which all felt anticlimactic and devoid of emotion to me. The game needs some major revision and fixes and feature creep in order to justify the price tag. If you want to play a shooter, play CoD. If you want to play an RPG, play TW3.

Game is really good, very promising in many ways. But number of small and bigger bugs is really annoying. It shoudn't be released in this state. After playing about 10h, I've decided to wait until februrary or march until more patches comes out. #brokensamurai

Despite what you might have expected, I'd give this a 4/5 at best for its story (excellent) and gameplay (medeocre). The bugs, lies and everything else lose it another point. The environment is 80% there, but many of the most interesting parts of the map are inaccessible (see rooftops, many interiors etc.) or haven't enough content/rewards in them to warrant even going to them. See Bethesda games or even The Witcher for how you should reward a player for taking time playing off the beaten track. The RPG elements are sub-par. Your actions appear to have little impact on anything that happens during the game itself (not including the story ending, from what I have heard). This is expected in any game really as no developer could flesh out any conceavable option, but ontop of many sidemissions (with notable exceptions) being extremely samey, a lack of random events (see above) and many parts of the tropes of cyberpunk literature unexplored due to lack of time spent on them (see netrunning - which is pretty much 1/3 of what 'cyberpunk' is - fairly absent in a novel form). Finally, the gunplay is broken and easy due to AI issues. Even on the hardest difficulty, pinging enemies and shooting them through walls from 100m away is a ludicroudly viable tactic. AI is absolutely awful given the year we're in. Police persuits are a joke. This entire game stands upon its storywriting (which is some of the best I've seen) and flouders in actual gameplay and scope. This is unfortunate, because there was no reason for this to happen.

While I can honestly say that I'm enjoying my experience with Cyberpunk 2077 for the most part, it's also obvious to me that this game needed more development time. A LOT more. Let's start with the bad: - A dark, interesting, active city that you only have limited interaction with - Horrible melee system - A weapon and item upgrade system that falls apart from glitches, exploits, and not being well thought out/tested - Substandard keyboard controls (with very limited remapping)... on a PC GAME - No midgame character customization... in a CYBERPUNK GAME - Adult situations that were very oversold - Rule of cool (a big deal in the Cyberpunk RPGs) greatly undermined - Bugs, bugs everywhere Now, the good: - Story is great, and very well written - Night City, while interaction is limited, still feels like its own character... even an oppressive force - Characters are very interesting engaging; you actually find yourself caring about them - Decisions actually have some weight... and not just dialog choices - Can actually approach missions a variety of ways, and is limited mostly by your imagination/observation... exactly like a pen and paper RPG - Leveling system, while somewhat flawed, is still open ended. can make a variety of viable builds - Gunplay is competent. Not fantastic, but definitely better than what's offered in some other games - Graphics, when working, are fantastic - Music is good, and lots of variety (loved that Haitian music was playing in Pacifica... but where's my Haitian radio station??) - Decent replay value Ultimately, I look at this game like a very rough gem. You can see the potential, and the game at its core is very enjoyable. When it hits, it HITS. But it obviously needs more development time. We have half baked and/or missing systems and features, limited interaction in places that should have more, and bugs and exploits that undermine or outright break the game. They should have stayed with "When it's ready".

Cyberpunk felt like an half cooked game that still has a lot of potential. It was released too early and now only time will tell how much it's going to be improved. I'm a little skeptical tbh because we're not just talking about bug fixing (and oh my there's a lot to fix in this regard) but features and quality of life improvements as well and it's a lot of work. They need to add ways to customize your character and vehicles in-game, minigames or something that one could really get into like Gwent was in Witcher 3. A proper wanted system, because right now you're not supposed to mess with the police. You can't even hack them, they just spawn on you and kill you. We'll see, right now i can only recommend the game to high end pc users that know exactly what they're getting into. If you can't ignore bugs and glitches this game is not for you right now. One thing i really appreciated is the level design, i had so much fun doing side jobs and gigs around Night City. In this respect i think what they did is nothing short of amazing. Also the main characters are super detailed and interacting with them felt pretty good in general. Imo the game needed more of these moments and a longer main quest too (and maybe less gigs). The life paths have been over-hyped, essentially they work like in Mass Effect, they give you some different dialogue options and that's it basically. Also the endings i got all end up with the same outcome, i felt all i did wasn't worth it, all the choices i made didn't make any difference. Many things were cut and that may be the reason why it's less of a rpg compared to Witcher 3 (and more of a looter shooter). Things that are good could've been great if the development wasn't rushed. CDPR set the bar really high with Witcher 3 so i didn't expect Cyberpunk to be as good, but this was underwhelming regardless.