Really cool gameplay mechanics using elements to progress past puzzles. Stealth/environmental manipulation to progress past levels. Fun, funny, and visually stunning.
Since I played this on the PC I've been one of the lucky ones. There were plenty of glitches, but nothing I haven't seen before in 20 years of gaming, and nothing that made the game unenjoyable. I'm mainly into games for the story and experience. What Cyberpunk does incredibly well is world-building. You can wander in this city for hours and still find new cool stuff to marvel at. In terms of story-telling, though, this game was remarkably linear. This was disappointing, since all the hype for the game was about how replayable it was and how much it focused on player choice. OK OK yes there's 3 life paths to choose from, but they really only impact the first few hours of the game, and maybe add an extra side quest for you to do (the corpo side quest was extremely short and disappointing). And there's a million little extra jobs you can do, if you're a completionist who likes completing tasks. And you can build your character in a bunch of different ways (though they're essentially all different shades of a combat character. Even my stealth/netrunner character cleared out rooms using one or two daemons, but if you want to solve problems with trickery and dialogue, this game doesn't let you). I compare this game to Deus Ex because anyone who's played those games knows it's famous for its endings. Namely, you play through a bunch of missions and then get to an obvious point that chooses the ending for you (in one of the games, literally push button 1 for ending 1, button 2 for ending 2 etc.) In other words, your carefully crafted character, your considered responses to previous dilemmas... none of it actually matters in terms of the final outcome of the game. These choices might open up a few additional side jobs along the way, but overall the game is actually very linear. Definitely suffered for the over-hype of the marketing on this game, but hey it's still a solid and enjoyable gaming experience. I'd give it 3.5.
This game really has the whole lot. Beautifully designed in a visual style I haven't seen in an isometric RPG before. The writing is complex, amusing, very dark, and absolutely brilliant. This is a uniquely designed game in a uniquely imagined world. There's great pleasure in just exploring every nook and cranny of this small corner of the world, with every dark room and stretch of land layered and thought through. Pretty much every NPC has depth and complexity, and it's always hard to figure out exactly how they're going to react to your specific brand of bizarreness. This is an RPG with minimal battle, putting the entire emphasis on character design and development. For those who love playing character-focused RPGs and always grudgingly level-up combat skills because otherwise you die every 10 minutes, this is the game for you. This isn't just a game that lets you get away with talking your way through problems—it's built for it. I can't praise this game enough. I'm probably only about 20% of the way through and it's already the best game I've played this year.
