It's such a shame to have seen CDPR fall from the highest of pedastals with the release of CP2077. Fortunately there is still Witcher 3 which, to me, is still the highest of gaming benchmarks. I think in someways it may have spoiled me. I find it so hard to get into games these days, especially thanks to them being unfinished and buggy as hell. I frequently find myself comparing games to Witcher 3 and I don't see that changing any time soon. Everything about this game just shows how much care and attention to detail went in it. The writing, the dialogue, the characters, the world, the stories....everything is just perfect. Sure, the combat isn't the best, but that's not why I play the Witcher. Still the best game I've ever played and, by the looks of thing, the best game I will have ever played for a long time to come. Long live the king.
First off I want to state the positives of this game. The character interaction, dialogue and writing is amazing. I felt connected with the characters and have enjoyed the time I've spent interacting with them. Night City is beautiful. The art team have done a fantastic job of creating a dense world that looks believable (emphasis on "LOOKS"). Been playing Cyberpunk 2020 with my tabletop group for years. It was amazing to step into the Night City we'd spent so long enjoying. It pains me to say the rest of the game is garbage. Combat: Boring, easy, playstyle is inconsequential. The AI is literally too dumb to pose a challenge at any point in the game. As flashy as things look combat is tedious and repetetive. You have to actually hamper yourself to make it challenging. Forget using tech or smart weapons and equip yourself with the most basic low DPS weapon you can find and you may have a challenge for a while before the broken skill system lets you one shot literally everyone with a lead pipe you picked up in an alley within the first few hours of the game. The World: It LOOKS great. But it's as empty, dead and soulless as a politicians promises. Traffic is little more than railway toy. No one reacts in any way that makes sense. There is nothing of interest going on anywhere beyond scripted sequences. It's sterile and antiquated. The very first GTA has a more believable and reactive world and NPCs. Driving: There's zero point to it. Cops don't chase you. There's no sort of combat. Apart from sight seeing there's no point. The loot: Having to stop and spend 10 minutes in your inventory after every single boring combat encounter is maddening. It thinks it's Diablo or Borderlands. There's not enough weapon variety or interesting properties to warrant it. The crafting system is broken and meaningless. And tbh the gear generally looks trash.I've seen more coherent fashion in Mad Max. Bugs aside, this game has bigger issues that I don't see patches being able to fix.
