Cyberpunk 2077

After puting the game down twice (burning through the main questline both times) only to finally hunker down and complete everything worthwhile the game has to offer, I can safely say that..... it's okay. Read the other reviews: it had an unforgivable launch on consoles (literally unplayable), underdelivered on the god-like hype (it had no chance of fufilling anyway), and is still riddled with bugs to this day (some are game-breaking or nearly game so, I was d**n near unable to finish due to one). Despite this, the story this game tells is compelling and worth the time to go through once the game is on sale. It is truly unfortunate that CD Projekt Red dropped the ball hard on this one. To recap in bullet-points the whole thing: -Story: vast majority is pretty good. Keanu does a great job along with the rest of the cast. I can see others strongly disliking the tone of most characters (lots of jargon and 'tough-guy' attitudes here) that won't be palatable. If you view this like a movie akin to the old Blade Runner and similar movies of that time, it'll go down smooth. -Gameplay: top-notch for a dev that worked on stabby third-person action. Good mix of perks and attributes that make for unique approaches to encounters. I opted to be a ghostly ice-man type, but you can easily be a John Rambo, cyber-wizard, or a literal ninja throwing kunai and s**t. You can even go completely non-lethal like in Metal Gear Solid. -RPG elements: lets you roll-play your V sort of. You'll always come across like somebody out of an 90's action movie, but it fits the setting. -Setting: god-teir atmosphere; they 100% nailed this! Night City is incredible and just oozes the namesake's style. Same with the guns, cars, body mods, etc., everything just fits to make the city believable. Although, some parts of the map were definitly underutilized. I did everything worth doing and came across places that were barren. And... that's it. Buy at a +50% discount as the story is worth one playthrough.

Even excusing the hilarious state of the game from a technical standpoint with all the bugs and what not (which I do believe will get fixed), this game is so far from what was promised to us. It's not even an RPG. It's a linear action adventure game with a few critical choices in a (fairly solid, admittedly) 15-20 hour storyline (albeit with double that content in side story missions which are good), set in an fake open world. Why fake? Well, it's an open world for sure, but it's hollow. Nothing to do in it. No pedestrian AI, no AI for drivers, no working police AI. Basically, it's the most expensive walking simulator with little to no interactivity with the surrounding world. This just screams cut content, so much of it. Oh, and perhaps most importantly, the gameplay is really mediocre. Sure, you have plenty of fun weapons to use, but enemy AI is worse than in a 2001 game, the character development system is basically just nonsensical percentage boosts for basic stats, and even those basis stats don't make much sense. It all feels just cobbled together, poorly. On a positive note, the story and quests are fine, characters are good, the game is beautiful (really stunning) and there's excellent music. There's a great game buried somewhere in this mediocre mess of cut content and poor design decisions. Not a great RPG for sure, but a great action adventure game, hence my 3/5. With technical stability, I might bump it to a potential 3.5/5, but no more than that. Not with so many broken promises and missing stuff in this shell of a masterpiece that wasn't to be. CDPR could potentially fixit, if they give it a "No Man's Sky treatment" everybody seems to be aching for. I personally doubt that will happen, but yes, it could save this one, and CDPR's reputation which is gone. Otherwise it will remain a testament to corporate greed, poor decision-making and blatant lies to loyal fans. Oh the irony... Silverhand would rail against you, CDPR, and so should we.

There is too much that still needs to be done in this game. AI is bad, making the world feel very artificial. The few population dynamics and events are bland, repetitive and for the most part inexistent . The side quest system is not good: you get side quests from a character you never met in person via phone, just by driving through places. You are basically working for the police without choice of refusal, even if you may have wanted to approach the game by the gang's side. Also there's no real choice in the main quest to change the course of events based on your approach. The life path choice is pretty useless and the flash forward thing where you meet jackie is really lazy. Could have made a questline to get to know the city and characters. It just makes me feel like my character already knows things that I, as a player, don't have a clue about, damaging immersion. There are many more things that don't feel right still and it makes me think that they just cut out content to publish the game faster. Overall it just feels like it's a rushed game with great ideas in the beginning, but thrown in the dirt just to get something out. And after all the delays i just wonder what went so terribly wrong in CDPR to make this happen. I was expecting a full immersive game, but in my opinion it's the opposite. Not worth the full price.

I was pretty dissapointed with the game overall after finishing it. The bugs and glitches are obvious annoyances, but in reality the true failures of this game go beyond these issues. Instead of an RPG where I felt conencted to my character and allowed to make choices, I was given an action game that gave me little in the way of choice. Lifepaths were dissapointing, the introduction to the game lasts so long and makes replaying the game a slog, I'm forced to have a sense of urgency because of the story, the story and side quests are mediocre and nothing special, the loot is boring stuff that adds miniscule % icnreases, majority of perks are also boring % stuff, characters who you never meet are thrown at you as if you've met them already (a byproduct of what I assume is rewrites and lack of time to really finish the game), and failures to utilize interesting ideas to their fullest extent. Fallout New Vegas is my gold standard for modern RPG games, and althought that game has it's problems it is overall a memorable and fun experience. I cannot say the same for Cyberpunk. This game seems very similar to Fallout 4 in a lot of ways in my opinion. A lot of illusions of choices without any real meat.

I came back to this game long after its dumpster fire of a launch. It's been so long since release and it's so sad to see how little that was promised has been realized. There are still many gross and terrible bugs that the company should be ashamed to have so frequently in the minute to minute gameplay. Too few people review the game past these frustrating bugs. The driving is just depressingly bad. Loading is spotty and leads to really lackluster NPC clusters. Nothing in this wide world is interactive. Street vendors don't sell things and the whole world is just still. The world is totally static and dead, with most NPCs simply standing and staring at nothing or wandering aimlessly. Nothing feels as though it was given enough time. Everything feels crunched and rushed. Nothing was given time to breathe or feel genuine. Even the story feels disjointed and just so-so. I cannot fathom what took so many years of development to reach. It seems as though it was just many years of 3D modeling of cyberpunk furniture and architecture, with no real effort dedicated to the actual planning and execution of game systems, gameplay loops, or anything of the like. Overall, the game tries to stretch itself in a hundred different directions and fails spectactularly to deliver on any front. You have more choice in how big your weener is than any meaningful roleplay in the game. In the end, anyone craving anything cyberpunk should look anywhere else. This is such a total shitshow and may very well have been a deathblow to the prospects of a true cyberpunk aeshtetic game.