Cyberpunk 2077

Played on patch 1.2 only and with an RTX rig. The world design, main story, side quests, gunplay and attention to detail are amazing. Also the levelling is quite diverse, there are various builds. GTA style effing around doesn't work in this game, true, however, I wasn't looking for that either.

The game is very much similar to the Witcher 3 in regards to HUD, mission types, quest and character construction, which is mostly a good thing. The plot is less polished then in Witcher, sometimes one can get lost in the story or in a multitude of characters. There is also less meaningful choices affecting the main questline. Side content is sometimes great (like The Hunt quest) and sometimes it’s just boring filler missions with no context. The bugs are plentiful; I’ve had mostly visual glitches (cars and NPCs appearing out of nowhere, missing textures etc) some AI bugs, and one quest breaking bug where I wasn’t able to hear or read any dialogue. The combat was far more enjoyable then I would have predicted. I don’t usually enjoy shooters but in this game I was having a lot of fun. Soundtrack is very good, both music and sound fx. The characters are fantastic; except for Johnny Silverhand. This might be controversial, but his character seemed the most out of place and I often found myself not knowing what he wanted from me. I don’t like rating games 1-5, rather 1-10, and this one gets 7.5-8/10. If not for bugs it might have been a solid 8-8.5/10.

The story and gameplay were fun. The graphics are great although it takes a beast to run. I played for about 80 hours and I got a bit bored near the end but I think that was just the bugs and the mass quantity. I got back into playing recently and its gotten a lot better and I replayed the end and enjoyed it. If the devs continue I think this game will be guenuinly memorable game and great experience but its not there yet.

A wonderful plot inspired by Gibson. I do not regret the purchase at all. I recommend to everyone. The best game of the last 10 years.

Does CDPR deserve to be berated for crunching their staff badly? Yes Does CDPR deserve to be berated for grossly overhyping the game as "Deus Ex with GTA level wideness" when it's really more like "Witcher 3 with guns"? Yes Does 2077 deserve being criticized for being what it is, technical issues aside (which are pretty minimal at this point anyway)? Depends. If you aren't a fan of CDPR's games from the Witcher series (or more particularly, W3 due to being the fully open world one and certain aspects taken directly from it such as the itemization) then I can understand not being fond of 2077. However, it baffles me from the amount of people who screech, "W3 was such a masterpiece, where did things go wrong?" when frankly W3 was a game purely held up by its presentation and writing. The actual combat, RPG systems, open world, and pace are at best "serviceable" and at worst, about as bad as any other AAA Ubisoft trite. 2077 definitely carries over some of these traits but at least bothers to improve on a decent amount of gameplay aspects and purely the fact that it's a FPS with guns that feel good to shoot with nice sound design and feedback compared to W3's bland ass combat. Otherwise, the writing quality is still top notch (people saying this game isn't "cyberpunk" didn't do any of the side quests or missed the point of the main quest), Night City looks gorgeous, and I can bypass garbage itemization systems by investing in a reasonable crafting system. Also props for the game not being an 80s nostalgia bait take on the future. Unfortunately, the actual open world events are dull (basically W3's but distilled to just combat arenas) and the one story element that does unfortunately fail to give a real sense of urgency is a pretty big issue (not that I'm asking for a timer, just CDPR rewrite how it's presented to the player) but really, all I want is a new expansion with original content because the general ground work of this game as an action-RPG is pretty fun.