Own it on Steam and played it for a little over 100 hours, throughout Early Access the devs have implimented more features and now with 1.0 release it is much more stable and enjoyable. It truly is a great game and a true passion project it seems, no other game comes close to executing this sorta genre/concept. People reviewing it more critically obviously expect perfection, no game ever delivers on that but it's still very very playable and enjoyable with the minor bugs that come from a randomly generated city and gameplay experience. Give it a try and you won't regret it if you truly want a constantly evolving crime solver game. Be the Private Investigator you wanted to be!
Just when you think there isn't a story, it starts to unfold and throw you in the thick of it. Gameplay mechanics that are engaging and rewarding with high risk at times for the added challenge. It might seem like an aged game graphically but luckily there has been great work done by a fellow on the moddb to update the graphics. So if you find the graphics not to your liking or just want to view a classic you played once through a new lens then grab the mod "Uplink OS" on the moddb. It really gives the whole game a fresh look.
(purhcased at 50% off) I never played the game at release date and had decided at that point to give it a year or so to see how updates go. A few weeks before 1.5 released I decided it was time to give it a try and i'm glad I did. It has it's flaws that is for certain but what game doesn't once you've played it for more than 20 hours. I've put a solid 150 hours of gameplay into it so far and have yet to finish the main campaign once. The city is a wonder for the roaming gamer type, it has more going on within the map than GTA maps do. So you can wander for hours and RPG to your hearts content. The drawback for me is the storyline that has a few flaws. Firstly is the pacing, you have really two timelines playing at once. Saving V from Johnny timeline and the other being V's attempt to become the best solo Merc in Night City. It's the differing pace of these two and really the total difference in the storyline that they should have been separated entirely different. As you play past the first tutorial heist mission you encounter an onslaught of reminders that "hey you're dying", this wouldn't be so bad except Victor tells you he gives you only a few weeks to live as do others throughout. So you're left with being reminded your brain is slowly melting and a map of wonder and quests galore with secrets hidden far too numerous for one playthough. You are literally having to deliberately decide that you will ignore any and all 'relic' malfunctions as you RPG your solo merc career. The game has never crashed for me and i've left it running for hours, stable FPS with only a few scenes or spots that have lower averages (GTX 1660). I honestly think if you sat down the extremely negative reviewers and asked them what they would add to make it better, a majority wouldn't know what to add specifically. I think the negative reviews at this point are just salty people with their expectations that got out of hand in the beginning.
