No amount of QoL patches will ever make this game what was promised or could have been. The atmosphere in Night City feels more like GTA:2077 than Cyberpunk, and is unimmersive throughout. There will never be fleshed out "roles" besides solo and "netrunner" (which is less netrunner and more spellcaster), and lifepaths are a joke. V will never be an interesting character, nor will it ever be possible to roleplay a unique V or personalize V's relationship with most characters/factions in any depth. Dialogue choices rarely provide satisfying variety in personality or opinions. The game rarely (if ever) accounts for or responds to V's beliefs, and V rarely expresses a belief beyond oafish comments for the likes of Silverhand to springboard off of. V's only concrete goal is survival, he has no fleshed out thematic conflicts. V is so boring that his presence often feels like an obstacle to the plot. Core game mechanics are shallow. The factions are largely indistinguishable in combat, with few enemy types. The factions/gangs lack any sort of relationship mechanic. Character customization is disappointing, lacking cybernetics that even nameless npcs use, like robotic arms and legs. Without mods, creating outfits is painfully limited too. The main quests are very short, and far too many main quests are nothing more than touching base with a character to recieve exposition. Most quests are so short that most of time it takes to complete them is spent travelling out of your way to find them, only to then have an unmemorable fight or chat. Additionally, the game tries hard to sell itself as shades of grey (more like shades of black), but many quests do this in a contrived manner, where compex, underexplored moral dilemmas are reduced to a forced binary choice thirty seconds after they're introduced to the player. The game remains a trite, shallow experience masquerading as a thoughtful, emotional one.
