Greetings everyone!

I have completed the game two days ago and decided to do a summary of my take on the good, the bad and the ugly of CP 2077. To qualify my experience, I played the game on a PC that far exceeds the maximum specs proclaimed by CDPR (with exception of the CPU) – i7-6700k, 64GB RAM, Samsung Evo 970 M.2 drive, nVidia RTX 3090. The game ran on maximum settings, Ultra RT and DLSS Quality. Frame rates ranged from 45 in complex areas to 60-80 in simpler areas. I was ok with this performance and I could have improved it substantially by turning off RT.

The good:
- Night City urban architecture and visuals – the city really looks amazing and believable as a future dystopian megapolis. Indoor and outdoor city areas look really good and organic together.
- Main storyline – whilst not jaw dropping or mind shattering with plot twists, it is entertaining, missions are varied and full size. You will in all certainty enjoy this during your first playthrough. It is much shorter than Witcher.
- Key side missions – your companion missions and some selected side mission story lines are really, really good. A lot of them go better and deeper than some Witcher 3 side missions. You do not have an endless supply of these missions, but they are enjoyable whilst they last.
- Character customization – with exception of your body size / type, the customization is very detailed and you can make your V look pretty much like whatever punk you prefer.
- Endings – I was surprised to see that each ending came with its own extended mission – this was well beefed out by CDPR. There are overlaps, but these are generally handled well.

The bad:
- The game is utterly linear. There is no point in replaying it as both main mission and side quests will turn out exactly the same way no matter what character you play. Yes, you may do a specific task within a mission using stealth instead of action – or perhaps might talk you way through once or twice – but in general there is very little branching or diversion within or between the missions. The story is also quite short and specific, so you will clearly remember just about everything when you start replaying (unless you take a two-year break).
- Standard side quests and NPCD activities are pure grind and absolute bore. They are carbon copies of each other and make no impact on the game world, on each other or on you as the protagonist. You do these for money and street credits and nothing else. Most of these missions take less than 2-3 minutes to complete if you go with action approach and you are levelled correctly for the mission (i.e. at the right character level or above). Pure waste of time.
- None of the game assets such as NCPD, gangs or corporations are used for anything – they are purely static decorations. No faction wars that you can take part in. No corporation espionage or plotting against each other that you are engaged in. No relationship with police other than one stray companion. Fixers are telephonic automatons with minor main plot exceptions.
- Handling of nudity and sexual themes in this game is childish, tasteless and detracts from the experience. Unless you are an extreme prude, you will be baffled and irate by the endless censorship and avoidance of normal human bodies in this game. I would prefer that all nudity and sex related material was just removed from this game – that’s how bad it was done. If you expect Witcher 3 like material – forget it, CDPR took 10 steps back vs Witcher. Or was it sideways?
- Romance – whilst missions with companions leading up to romantic engagement are fun, romance itself is a binary matrix that depends on your gender, voice and sexual orientation. You really like that specific character? Too bad, she is a hard coded lesbian, so will not whiff at a straight person and vice versa. In summary, you have one straight girl, one lesbian girl, one straight guy, one gay guy. Mission accomplished; all boxes ticked. The romance scenes themselves are a non-event anyway due to the point just above, so just as well. Romance characters become largely non-reactive once you complete their missions.
- Prologues – very short and pretty meaningless. Good idea turned into a filler space.

The ugly:
- Outdoor areas (i.e. wide open areas outside the city) are bordering between average and poor in terms of modern games visuals.
- Some views, especially those that open onto large vistas, look particularly bad. A good example is the view from the hotel room during the Heist mission – it looks like it came out of 2005 console port title, not 2020 PC game.
- Clothes don’t matter in this game one bit. Despite the game telling you that “looks are everything” in the beginning, nobody cares how you look in any situation. Most of the time you will look like a clown on steroids because the next random set of clothing will have a maaaaarginally better armor rating then the random piece of clothing you’ve put on 5 minutes earlier.
- Guns – you will initially think that you get lots of different guns in this game. In reality you have a pistol, a shotgun, a SMG / assault rifle and a sniper rifle. Pistols are the only weapon with some distinct variants, others mostly have 2 versions. Again, just like with clothing, your next gun will be 2% better than your previous gun. There are some exceptions with unique weapons but not a lot.
- Melee – your click-click-click option if you want to win the fight. Overpowered melee weapons that pretty much solve most fights in your favour. Melee weapons differ in looks but not really in mechanics.
- Minimap – this abomination will be your biggest obstacle to driving the car. It does not possess the zooming capability, so you will constantly miss your turn. For walking it’s ok.
- Cars – I don’t have much gripe with car mechanics in this game because it should not be its primary focus. However, lack of variety, lack of real difference between the different cars in terms of handling, no garage etc. makes cars yet another half-baked feature of CP 2077. Bikes are an easier to handle version of transport, although their handling is nothing like a bike you might have used in another computer game. They just do corners much better and can stop nearly instantly.
- Car sprites – I don’t know who thought up the idea that ugly car sprites could serve well as traffic on the distant (and not so distant) streets and highways. This really looks bad, especially from high up. They also change dynamically from “side car view” to “front” or “behind” car view, which would be hilarious if not so sad.
- Bugs – endless visual glitches, persons stuck in surfaces, objects floating, invisible objects, invisible people etc – enough has been said about this. Bugs are numerous, you will see them on every playthrough, in all areas, every day. I did not have game-breaking bugs, I did have quest breaking bugs but these were resolved by loading an earlier save. I played the whole game on v.1.03 because of the new issues that kept on being added by hotfixes.
- Lore – I did not enjoy the lore propagation through shards. I tried reading them in the beginning, but 90% of the text was just not engaging enough so I stopped. Lore through conversations was fine.

Summary:
For me, CP 2077 fails to impress. It is a reasonably good action-adventure game that you can play once and forget. The lacking game mechanics and limited replayability are beyond repair in my view as they are structurally part of the product, so I don’t think this game can be fixed. Perhaps its sequel, if it ever comes, might one day be better.

Witcher 3 was a real masterpiece made by CDPR – this game is very average vs that high point.

I wish CDPR to survive this challenge and learn from it.

Agree

The game is busted needs more patching on the surface people with little amount of time who like the game might look past the flaws, But it does start to break down the fact the variations are broken and fist fight fights are also.

I can't do anything else but agree with about everything here.
I've played through the game, enjoyed the main story and non-fixer side quests (even though there were issues), but the rest was incredibly shallow.

It's a pity CDPR's management has had their heads far up their arse, completely failing to understand how easy it is to destroy goodwill from your fans (and they had so much of it, thanks to TW3), which will likely be a permanent scar.
Instead they abandoned their "leaving the greed for others" motto, and are now unfortunately yet another fallen 'triple A' game publisher, deserving of distrust.
It's so incredibly stupid. There've been plenty of recent examples where fans crap all over a pubisher's broken game and broken promises. But nope, not learning that lesson; have to get rich quick, screw reputation, slaughter that golden egg goose.

It's a shame and CDPR's management should be very ashamed.
Nothing but love for the devs, who are undoubtedly very unhappy with how their managers butchered what should have been their greatest piece to date.

Yeah, this is the real issue for me. The bugs aren't a problem, they won't even exist a few months from now, but the poor design decisions and the limited structural framework of the game will be with it forever and it is this that I find the most disappointing. Had I not already known before I played the game that it was made by the same people that built The Witcher 3, I wouldn't have believed it.

Right now, I fell disappointed. Hopefully, they patch in some of the missing stuff via DLC or an enhanced version. Main mission is fun, but then what? I was expecting a TW3 level of characters and story/world state consequences.

How the mighty have fallen, though.. The massive love and respect for the company has been quite dashed as of now.. No Manh's Sky did it, maybe, maybe not for them, it's hard to tell because so much is missing when you really look, but we shall see.