This game is a broken masterpiece. It's held together with tape and spit and tape but with some mods becomes *just* a masterpiece: (see bottom for necessary mod list) It's simple. Some games try to immerse you with realistic graphics and cool looking worlds but under the surface it's just empty. Other games try to immerse you with a tightly well written drama that you're forced to play out. New Vegas immerses you by throwing you into a sea of political tension. The Mojave is yours to poke and prod at. There's tons of different factions which all play off one another. The choices you make *will* impact the game. The degree to which your actions can create or close different opportunities for you in the future, or have unforeseen effects is incredible, and it makes sense too. The writing is the best writing I've seen when you consider the scope of what Obsidian provided. The game has some modern comforts but other than a quest marker, the game does NOT hold your hand. It merely points you in a direction and suggests that it's probably a good idea to go that way. Before even hitting level 2 it's possible to butcher your relationship so bad with the two major factions that you'll be shot on sight and they'll even send high level death squads after you. Other than one specific instance, you can't revert this either. You can't just go to jail like you can in Elder Scrolls games and be released a free man. No, you are an enemy and you will be treated as one. Of course the greatest accomplishment of the game is providing the player with morally gray situations which really are not simple. This is the only game that's had me pause the game right before a huge decision and debate internally for up to half an hour because two ideologies I hold simultaneously are shown to contradict each other. That's powerful and no other game comes close to doing this to me. Not even Fallout 1 or 2, or Planescape Torment. Play this game. Necessary mods: NVSE NVAC NVTF YUP
NOTE: This review is from the perspective of someone looking for a good role-playing experience, keep this in mind while reading. tl:dr the game fails to deliver as an RPG 1: The main quest is on rails with very little interactivity, i hope you like cutscenes, grab some popcorn. 2: The world is huge but empty. There is no meaningful difference between areas. The only real difference is visual, and how tough the enemies are. Even Skyrim has distinct cities that have unique questlines with the different guilds. There's tons of radiant quests, and very few hand crafted side quests. And even these are often the bottom of the barrel. (The monk quest is just kill enemies, get berated by an ungrateful guy then you're done). Barring the main quest, play the game for 4 hours doing side missions and you've seen all the game has to offer. 3: No (narrative) character customization. The life paths are a perfect microcosm of the lack of player autonomy. Everyone is a street kid. Your background means absolute squat in terms of the story, barring a few dialogue options which are just flavor text themselves. This theme applies to the rest of the game. There isn't "your V." There is "the V" and you better like the box CDPR carved out for you. 4: It has a looter shooter system, but is just worse than Borderlands in the execution. You will *never* have to grind to get passed a section, just equip the stuff with the highest numbers and you'll always do just fine so long as you don't go into zones labeled very high risk. I grew up on the original Diablo so I love loot driven "RPGs" and this fails at it spectacularly. There simply is no incentive for the loot. To cap it off I'll just compare it to The Outer Worlds. The Outer Worlds is an extremely flawed game that I could spend hours criticizing and yet the game consistently delivers as an RPG in key areas where Cyberpunk fails. Player Autonomy Interesting NPCs World Interactivity RPG stat mechanics (stats, skills, etc) Dialogue
