I played the story through taking the Panam path (so I can't review the other story paths). Frankly the game has great atmosphere, the music really suits it, there were some great set pieces, and the story is generally great - deep, thoughtful, immersive. Just playing the game as a story (skipping any side quests, not deviating for 'world exploring') I rate it 9/10. Unfortunately, GTA in the future it is not. You are walking down the street, pull out your gun and shoot someone. You get a wanted star. Kill three more people and you are at the maximum wanted level. Police spawn literally in front of you, or much more enjoyably, behind you when there was no possible way to get there. Totally destroys the immersion and the game basically punishes a player from doing 'their own thing' - there is no choice and even in the story mode there are many moments when there is no real choice. You continue walking down the street, as pretty as it is, and realize that for every shop/hotel/disco etc. that you see maybe 1/100 you can actually interact with. Almost every vendor in the city has no dialogue, they do nothing. This game actually reminds me of Postal 3 - amateur hour doesn't begin to explain it. I don't know if the makers of this game have the money to spend on the clearly massive job of fixing this game - because much of it needs to be reworked. The only way I see the developers coming out on top, especially after Sony pulling the game, is to basically take every bit of profits they made and plough it back into this game, keep on a large development team and actually make it the best game ever made - and release it back into the wild in a year or two. They could call it "Cyberpunk 2077: Forced Update Edition" - regarding Windows 10. Personally I hope they do take this route, even though it is obviously costly. It seems the only way to back out of having delivered such an amateur, high school project level world sim - the story is great, now make the world great too!
