I personally think the game is head and shoulders above most other RPGs. Perhaps because the designers chose to let you miss some extended content in favor of of the story being rich and varied. There are nuanced quests that have complicated conclusions both in the end game and in the moment. Night city is also gorgeous. I like to drive places rather than fast travel because the scenery is so varied and beautiful.
I remember playing it for the first time back before/around the time that HL2 came out. It's a little worse for the wear graphically, but the game play's solid.
It, along with the other game from Subset, "Into the Breach", is one of the most replayable and enjoyable titles. Well worth it.
The voice acting is top notch. The art deco style and character design is beautiful. The animations for your character are very stylish and detailed. The combat is somewhat repetitive. I mainly ran around trying to avoid attacks in between waiting for the timer to recharge so that I could pause and think my attacks through. My impression of combat is that it’s too frenetic for real-time, and too easy for pause. That combined with the weapon mechanic of not being able to adjust weapon loadout before/after battle felt really limiting. I found myself wondering why the devs chose to limit your ability to switch weapons to stations. Why not let me switch ad-hoc? Having to flip back and forth between weapons, and combos, and try them out, then return to the station to try out a new combo felt needlessly limiting. The narrator talks like he's intimately familiar with you, but I never feel a connection with him. And he begins speaking like he’s read the screen before it even loads, it might be more impactful if he waited to comment until I’ve had a chance to read it. As it was I found myself forgetting what he said, or trying to read while he was talking. Either way, it was an exercise in frustration. Overall, beautifully executed but marred by design choices that felt needlessly limiting. I felt this way about Bastion too, less so about repetitive combat mechanics, but it was very frenetic. I wanted to enjoy the story, but ended up frustrated by the combat.
