Cyberpunk 2077

This game has bought critics and showed fake graphics a lot. It fails to hook you as other big titles with less hype did. Has its moments, but just that: some random isolated moments. Graphics are... Mediocre. All is blurry and way too grainy, and turning tose "improvements" off makes it look like a 2014 game. Dont get fooled by face textures or official gameplay videos. At night the city looks good and it does load a lot of things. character customization is a joke. Has no impact and you'll never see your own character. As for the game, there is little "adventure" as most dialogues change nothing of the plot and there is not many hard choices to make. You mostly sit and wait to the quest to auto complete, and there's not a lot of approachs to the quest: there's the "cyberpunk's 2077" way (hacking and doing stealth ninja hacker stuff to dumb enemies that aim like stormtroopers) and doing things any otyher way feels clumsy and forced. Not even an option to solve things via dialogue! Driving is a pain as vehicles are too sensitive and police will chase you for anything ruining your quest progress (and some NPCs will jump towards your car instead fo jumping away from it) Cant give more than 2 stars to a game that has silly bugs (overlapping textures, missing animations) and other bugs that force you to go back hours of progress because an quest item decided to fly away. It wants to be Fallout, GTA and a stealth game at its mediocre at doing all of them at the same time at best.

Yes, there are bugs. I'm not going to talk about those, because the bigger issue is that the core of the game just isn't very good. If you want an RPG in the vein of Mass Effect, you won't get that here. You sure as hell won't get The Elder Scrolls or Fallout either. There's very little choice or interaction with the world. Night City feels less alive than the world in some non-RPG games (e.g. Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA V). And, in terms of choice, it doesn't feel like you have any control over who your character is. Unlike Mass Effect (or even The Witcher), you don't have meaningful choices that let you carve out your own personality. V is just a kind of an irritating edgelord. It wouldn't be so bad if V's character was actually likeable. But, this is no Geralt of Rivia. Geralt felt like a wholly-realized character with motivations, personal relationships, morals, etc. And despite having such a fully-formed personality, it still felt like you had a strong influence over who he was (without making him a completely blank slate). None of that feels true of V. V is neither a blank slate nor a fully-realized character. Somehow, they've managed to take the worst of both worlds. So, you're left with a hollow character devoid of a captivating personality and whom you can't shape in any meaningful way. So, we're left with what is essentially an action game. But...that's not very good either. The shooting is janky and the enemies are bullet-sponges. It feels annoying, rather than satisfying, to slowly chip away at an enemy's health. Melee is pretty bad and even jankier. Stealth and hacking feels like an afterthought. This is no Deus Ex. Everything kind of feels like a mess. The first time you walk around Night City, you'll be amazed. But, then you'll pull back the curtain and find that there's nothing much there.

Missing re-customization options (hairdresser/plastic surgeon), severe lack of customization options (very few tattoos or choice of where tattoos can be placed is my gripe), can't sit down at restaurants/bars to role-play having a drink or meal (would be the preferred way to get food/drink buffs), can't throw eddies at strippers, lackluster joytoys and sex cutscenes, broken AI and a basically non-functioning crime system. The world feels dead and honestly only works as a linear story experience, which is not what was promised. What is there works, for the most part, at least in my experience, just should be a lot more there.

The prologue of CP2077 really sucks you in. But after 8 hours or so, once you're off your leash, you can start seeing the seams in the grand illusion. Walking the streets feels like being on a movie set. All the stores are closed and locked. Very few merchants even sell anything (the guy at the noodle stand asks "Do I know you?" instead of trying to sell me noodles. The NPC AI is nonexistant. Car AI is nonexistant. I'd like to compare CP2077 to another open-city RPG that just released. Yakuza: Like a Dragon. In this game, a "real RPG", you explore a living, breathing city as an RPG hero while tackling fun and endearing side quests, eating at restaurants, shopping at convenience stores, going to pawn shops to buy new items, making friends at the unemployment office, singing karaoke at your favorite bar, playing arcade games, and generally feeling IMMERSED in this beautiful, living, interactible city. Yakuza: Like a Dragon excels at what CP2077 utterly fails at. Giving you an immersive RPG experience coupled with a beautiful, living, breathing city filled with beautiful vistas, secrets, and a real reason to explore the world and get lost in it. Cyberpunk 2077 absolutely fails in that regard. You can walk around, block after block, not finding a store to walk into and peruse, or find a NPC in need. It's just an illusion. Night City is the most beautiful cardboard cutout ever rendered onto my TV screen. The city is beautiful, but it might as well be one of those old-timey Western movie sets. There's nothing on the other side. What an absolute shame. I implore you; if you want a truly immersive RPG set in a beautiful, living city, pick up the new Yakuza (or Y0, which is regularly $5 on sale) and treat yourself. Maybe come back to Night City in 12-18 months and see if they straightened things out.

When considering the quality of this game I will ignore any bugs that i have run into with this game, numerous as they are, and simply focus on intended design of this games' features. The good: The narrative is interesting, and the world it is placed in is fairly unique, the only game I know that is similar is deus ex. The amount of side quests is suppossed to be very large, and they are apparently great, I wouldn't know though, because I cannot find any. The bad: The main issue I have with this game is that there is actually no redeeming factors at all. Combat is very mediocre, driving is as bad and unineresting as Watch Dogs 1, except without damage models, player character building and crafting are probably the worst features of the game, and exploration is barely rewarding. Combat: This game requires very little skill. In most situations I find myself in a shootout where the main goal is to attack my enemies 1 by 1, so that I can comfortably empty 1 to 3 magazines into their head, and onto the next one. weapon unlocks is pretty pointless, since you will probably be carrying 3 weapons, and there aren't more than 4 or 5 weapon types anyway. They also all handle the same. Driving: Cars are not very controlable, and the ai traffic is so bad they are basically just slow moving obstacles. They don't make driving dynamic at all, and they are nothing but uninteractable blobs of low LOD. RPG elements: I have not crafted or heard about crafting in my first 5 hours, but i have seen the craftable items, and they are some weapons and items that are on par with anything any enemy can drop. Completely pointless. The character skill tree is 99% stat upgrades and a small amount of actual skill unlocks, which makes this very uninteresting. Stealth: Most levels seem not to be made for stealth, but if you do decide to sneak somewhere where ai is too strong to shoot, their gadgets are too high level to hack, so you also cant sneak past them. I only had 2000 words. Don't buy.