Cyberpunk 2077

Audiovisually the game is excellet, if a bit lifeless, and the writing is generally at least passable. A lot of effort has clearly gone into the afore mentioned as well as the cutscenes and story bits, but it seems that all that happend at the expense of everything else. And while there are the things like lacking AI all around the place and lacing interactivity, most sorely that loss of effort and focus is felt in the gameplay department. The game is not an RPG, make no mistake thinking it is one. It's a storydriven open world looter shooter adventure that relies so much in its selfappointed narrative excellence that it completely forgets that games made to be played first and foremost. And that manifests in the horrible loot system, weak character systems and other halfdeveloped features like crafting. It's almost like the games had an identity crisis at some point, but didn't do anything about it and thus left somewhere in between with all of its faults. You spend the entire game killing tons of people through witless mechanisms - though some of them understandable since it at some point wanted to be an RPG - that make the player compare digist or armor and damage values, thinking about if 5% damage/armor increments in the perk trees are worth anything, figuring about the lack of enemy AI, finding out the whole thing is completely out of balance with some very easy to achieve power builds already early on. And of course watching heavy cutscenes while suffering through the longwinded main missions of the quite short main story (that feels out of place with it's length and finality if looking against how much there is to do in the world around it). I found that the small gigs from the fixers were the best part of the game. Simple, yes, not very narrative heavy, but they felt like that's what the sort of edgerunner like the protagonist would do. There is some potential in the game, but it needs quite a bit of work still and some heavy redesigning in places.

This is not the game I was expecting at all. It got hyped way too much throughout the last few years and in the end it's a big letdown. The world is big but it feels empty. There's tons of the same type of missions "go here and kill those guys" again and again like copy&paste. Where are the unique missions with their own backgroundstory ? The story overall is okay but nothing great. The game has a lot of bugs and glitches even if they are not gamebreaking they are very annoying. This game could have needed atleast one more year of development and even then I doubt it would have been the great masterpiece most of us were expecting. They told us decisions would matter but in the end you are basically forced to answer one kind of way in most dialogues. There's not really a choice if you want to go the good,the evil or the crazy route. The three different origins don't really matter because after 30 minutes they all lead to the same story. The game should not have been released in it's current state. The graphics are nice and the story is somewhat enganging. There's a ton of weapons to choose from and there's a lot of lot overall.

The good in this game is really good. Using top end hardware, the graphics are great, the main story is pretty good, the guns feel good. However, so much in this game feels incomplete or unpolished... There are too few sidequests that give a unique fulfilling experience. After act 1, you start receiving a bunch of calls from people you've never met and you are unable to skip them, which becomes incredibly annoying and immersion breaking. Their quests themselves just get littered throughout the city and overall makes the questing not feel organic. There is only 2 romance options for male and female physiqued chatacters respectively. Beyond the initial cutscene you have with them to cement your relationship, there is no further content to enjoy with your new partner. A couple text messages and thats it. There are also just so many features in this game that I'm surprised are missing. No 3rd person option. No hairdresser/cosmetic changing services. Beyond getting your initial cybernetic implants, all of the rest do not show any cinematics of their installations which just felt like a missed opportunity. Also, getting cybernetic implants not really having any consequences, when a big part of many side quests is cyberpsycosis. And the bugs... T posing, floating food, bodies not getting dumped correctly, etc. Fortunately, I never ran into any that were game breaking, but it really sucks when your actually enjoying the cyberpunk gameplay experience and suddently a palm tree becomes flacid and droops into the middle of the road or you are driving a motercyce and your character starts t-posing on top of your vehicle. This game needed to be in development for another year before being released. The fact it was released as is... I feel bad for the developers who were forced to push an unfinished product into release. The CEO's and upper management of CDPR should be ashamed of how they handled the release of a game that could have truly been something really special.

I really really wanted to like this game. I've played almost 50 hours and now I can give an accurate review. I bought the game as the heat started to build from critics, despite this I remained positive after watching 25 hours of gameplay on twitch and youtube. I knew there were issues but it just looked too good. Cyberpunk 2077 has enormous potential but this is completely overshadowed by the multitude of issues. I will outline a portion from my experience. The biggest issues for me are low framerate regardless of graphics settings. With only Ray tracing Psycho producing even lower fps. Raytracing off and other settings on low look as choppy as high settings with ray tracing medium. With or without DLSS (wont consider DLSS artefacts relevant to CP'77 as it's Nvidia's thing). I just can't get a consistent acceptable frame rate, no matter what I try. Crackly and popping audio. Indeed my sound adapter is at the recommended 16 bit 48,000 Hz. Never had any issues with any other game. And never have I heard of bit depth and sample rate requirements for a game. Another thing I just can't find a solution to. Biggest issue of all though, my guns just stop firing. And I have to reload the game save to get them to work again. I wish I didn't have to say this but, YES I did have ammo.. The Delamain side quest is still bugged for me, despite it apparently being patched. NPC's are next to useless, they are incredibly dumb and very immersion breaking. Police are beyond a joke. The city feels dead and lifeless. Overall the game feels very rushed. It pains be to give one star, but considering I can't even fire my weapons now, what other option is there?

Honestly, I have a huge tolerance for bugs as they can be fixed. Some of the best and my favourite RPGs out there were so buggy during the release and they were polished afterwards. What cannot be fixed is that the game is not an RPG and all the broken promises and lies we were fed. The city is sterile and shallow, it is a light show with a little substance. You create a character, but you are not really that character. You share "V" with Silverhand and you have no real say in how he/she will behave. You do not really make decisions, aside from what jobs to take and means on how to kill or not kill NPCs. You are just a mindless driver of "V's" body. There are basically zero consequences or decisions (aside from the endings, which, although different flavour-vice, do not bring any difference for your character or the world). Dialogues frequently offer only one option, or just some flavour text to pass the time. The story is extremely railroaded and if you do not like it (like me), bad for you, because you cannot really express yourself in the game or change anything (huge difference from The Witcher 3, where you can influence so many things and you can see the consequences later). It is extremely shameful to see something like this and I have a hard time to watch everybody talk just about the console issues and bugs, while not seeing that the whole game is a lie and a pile of broken promises. The only reason I give two stars instead of one, is because I like Panam... eventhough a little time she had in the game, with little possibilities to affect anything or to express - to roleplay my character, I found her presence and character pleasant and strangely calming. Shame on you CD Project, I hope it was worth it, to lie and cheat your customers and fans like this. You are sellouts. The Witcher 3 was masterpiece (and I wish there was even more content to it, or a game that was a proper RP successor). Cyberpunk is just an empty shell.