Cyberpunk 2077

This review will contain spoilers. This game as it has been said was unfinished in many ways. The bugs were annoying, with some quests so buggy that I had to reload the game often. The bugs can be fixed and I am sure they will be, given enough time. My review however and the reason for the low score, is the game itself. The world does feel empty. It's beautiful but ultimately the gameplay is not that great. There is no way to play the game for example and get a happy ending. In the end V dies. Either right away or over the next few months. No matter how well you play and how much effort you put in, it's hopeless. This kills any chance at replayability. The AI is terrible with cops spawning immediately on top of you whenever you so much as sneeze. I waited for 5 years for this game. They rode on the success of their previous game. CDProject Red, you were the last gaming company I trusted and I preordered the game from you. I don't do that for any other company because one by one they all lied to us and delivered bad games. Now you too.... This game needed a few more YEARS in development at the very least. It was rushed and it shows. This should have been a 2025 release.

glitchy buggy nightmare. was already pessimistic going into it but didn't realise how bad the core game actually is.

CDPR was the only company left that I was willing to pre-order due to their reputation of respecting their consumers. But with the launch of this game, they throw all that goodwill into the garbage. Surprisingly, I had a somewhat "bug-light" experience, only the occasional graphic glitch, missing voiced dialogs, but not one game breaking bug. But the way CDPR handled this launch is outright dishonest, to say the least, especially for the console players. But bugs aside, the game itself is very generic. It's the run-of-the-mill generic assassin's creed-esque open world, where there's a ton of markers on the map with the same activities. There's little point in exploration, since the loot is so boring that you have no incentive to exciting things to find. You just kills baddies to upgrade your gear. Crafting is such a slog. I decided in my first playthrough to focus on crafting, and I tell you, who design this should be fired. I mean, really? you want me to hold mouse click to craft without the ability to choose the amount? And if I want to convert my 1000 uncommon upgrade components to the higher tier compontents, I have to click-hold for, like 10 minutes? It is so bad that I had to create a AHK script to craft these things. About exploration, it's a shame really, because Night City is freaking beautiful with amazing details. It would be very immersive if not for the lack of common activities (like drinking or eating), braindead NPCs and bugs. The story is okay if somewhat very short (20h I guess), the characters are good, but not Witcher 3 good. It's the only thing bringing the score up. What a waste. It's the personification of the terrible year of 2020.

Ok, lets start with the basic mechanics of the game. First, combat. Once you pick up the Contagion quickhack, combat becomes obsolete as you are able to take down whole areas without ever coming into actual combat, later quickhacking allows you to do this through walls so you no longer even have a LOS restriction. This horrifically unbalances the game as you cant lose, it doesnt matter how much higher in level than you they are, they cant defend against you launching a hack on them from extreme range through walls. If you choose to avoid hacking completely for this reason, it is still extremely difficult to lose unless you make a mistake and take out an environmental explosive at close range. I spent hours just punching mobs to try build up my skills, the size of the mob or their equipment level didnt matter, just went in with fists and only ever died when punching said explosives, the AI never troubled me. Second, content. There are a lot of open world activities like crimes to stop and random side jobs to do, like a whole lot of them. However there is very little actual difference between them, once you do them a few times you've done them everytime, particularly the street crimes where each one is almost exactly the same encounter each time, and the side jobs you can get have very little difference between them. Its a broad smear of very thin content, You are also expected to build up an absolutely vast fortune if you want all achievements though, as you will need huge sums of money to buy all of the vehicles, the vehicles which all handle virtually identically but even if you are to do every quest, every side mission, every open world activity, you are still going to have to spend a lot of time just grinding through crafting to make the money to buy them all as there just isnt enough otherwise if you intend on getting any of the higher tier implants. There is more, but alas, review post limits.

So the story is 10/10 hands down. I finished it and it actually made me feel for the hero despite some bugs during the run. However, as you probably know, this game is flooded with bugs bugs bugs, more and more bugs. But that's not the worst thing. The worst thing is the mechanics of this game and the open world which is DUMB. Scripted scenes can be seen multiple times (like some lady shouting at husband - she never stops, seriosuly, doing it always, the same speech - it kills the immersiveness) Oh and I am not going to play this game anymore (even dlcs) until they CREATE a proper police chasing system.