The core game itself is a fantastic game and I think fans of either the genre or of CDPR will find it to be very much the game they were hoping for. After a fairly long opening story. which is quite linear. you are eventually dropped into free-roam where you are free to pick up side-missions, explore the city, take part in events littered around, or push ahead with the main story. I think all of these elements are quite fun on their own and even the boring sounding missions are usually more engaging than you would expect. As for the bugs issue, I'm not sure if I happened to luck out or I happen to be running the same hardware they used to test builds on, or maybe everyone else is blowing it out of proportion - I can't really say. But for my part I have not yet had any quest breaking bugs, UI bugs, or any other issues requiring a restart of the game in my 25 hours in Night City. This isn't to say I haven't encountered bugs, but they have been restricted to a single T-posing NPC, the occasional NPC dialogue playing over another one, one scene where my camera was placed inside an NPC, and some clipping (NPCs walking through doors, through my character, through parked cars, and rarely the ground). When it comes to graphics and performance, this area could use some polish. I am using a 5700XT and a Ryzen 5 3600 and I get about the performance I expect to get most of the time, but not all the time. I get my fair share of frame drops during combat, usually when things are exploding or a lot of things change in the scene. I also have some issues with the weather, when the in-game weather changes I will often get quite a bit of frame drops for a few minutes before it normalizes again. Driving quickly around will also reveal some performance issues, cars and pedestrians sometimes lag behind the scene in loading and will kinda just pop in when you get close. tl;dr: Great game, I love it, but have experienced my fair share of performance dips and non-critical bugs. If you don't mind this, pick it up, but if you want a more polished and refined experience I would wait a few months until more patches land.
I'll leave my review to the point, I'll try not to make it too lengthy. I picked this game up in anticipation for Witcher 3 but only recently got around to starting it. I wish I booted it up immediately after finishing the first game. Right off, the game looks beautiful. The first game was fantastic because of gameplay and story, but graphics left some to be desired; not so with this game. I plain don't care that this game has no fast-travel system because it is a joy just to walk and see the wonderfully crafted world. Watching light effects in the forest (particularly at dusk and dawn), well designed landscapes, character faces, and everything else make this game worth the reasonable price tag. Graphics aside, the gameplay mechanics are much more polished and overall nicer. Combat is a little different but I found easier to get into (less spammy). I think most people will find it to be a nice evolution if they can get past the fact stances are no longer in there. This did cause a minor annoyance with combat, you can't just swing your sword and hit everything in front of you (using the group fight setting they had in the first game) so large group fights you have to be very defensive and tactically retreat often. Once I got used to it I actually came to like it. Creates more "realism". Ultimately, even a witcher probably can't just jump in the middle of 15 drowners and not take some serious hits, with this thats exactly what happens. I also really appreciated the dev not watering down their alchemy mechanic. Great that you can use it anywhere though! The alchemy is a large part of what sets this game apart from others. You have to find ingredients containing the base compounds you need + a recipe, and off you go making potions. However, you can only have so many effects at once (potions give toxicity, if a potion brings you over max you can't use it until existing potions wear off). The other feature being that you can't just pop a potion just anywhere (like pretty much every other RPG out there), you have to plan. If you know a fight is coming up, take your health regeneration and strength potions now because you simply can't mid fight. This adds real challenge to the game without making the player feel cheated (i.e. just make the boss have more health or unbelievably strong attacks), compared to something like Skyrim where you can just pause a fight to eat 10 pounds of beef and drink a health potion. Last note, I absolutely loved the story. It's not always clear how the decisions you make will effect the game world, making each decision harder. Plus they did a good job making characters you love (or hate if they're a real arse), something lacking in some titles lately. This story grips you and you care about how things turn out. tl:dr If you liked the first game you will like this one for sure. If you are new to the series it will probably be a little weird at first getting used to alchemy and combat as well as preparing before a fight. Get into the story and explore the dialogue, there's a lot going on and a lot of information to digest.
