The game has a great story and characters, it has style, it has everything it needs to be a great movie, the game is worth playing once to see what happens, but it's hardly a sandbox.
The gameplay is just fine. It suffers from console-syndrom - It's slow, simplistic and easy. There are tons of weapons and items, crafting, customization, but because it's so easy you end up looking only at DPS, spamming attack and exploiting the dimwitted AIs.
Even well over a year on and with this "patch 1.5" supposedly fixing the game, I can confidently say that it remains a major disappointment, with all the time spent the game has barely improved, and whereas bulletholes showing in windscreens and having varying dent sizes and water ripples is nice, the utterly dead world devoid of interest really isn't.
NPC's continue to be worse than what you could find in 2008 RPG's like oblivion and even earlier, 0 reaction for stepping up in their face, aiming a gun right at them, smashing a car, nothing, nada, it's like you don't exist in the game world until you blow someones head off, even then only the NPC's within 50 meters are going to react, press F for one random voice line and that is your only interaction with people on the streets, you can't even press F again for another random voice line. You can't do anything to push, irritate, intimidate or interact in any other way with an NPC and with all shops being vendors, you don't even have an interesting shop keep or bar tender to interact with.
I'm not going to waste time revisiting the still unchanged graphical issues that we have know about for over a year, but suffice to say rather than being optimised and improved, graphics seem to have taken a step back and gained a fuzzier appearance than on release, but at least they compensated by allowing you to scale up the amount of grafitti to the point that you don't need any other decals or objects in the environment because everywhere is the equivalent of a spray painted underpass.
This isn't an RPG, it is a linear mission/level style game where the level environments are linked with a confusing and useless open world and after multiple starts and attempts to get into it and be open minded, I just really cannot recommend this game to anyone, not even at £25.
They cannot fix this game, i saw Witcher 3 when it was broken and i saw it a year later, this isn't the same thing, Cyberpunk 2077 is unfixable.
tl;dr: had tons of fun, but expected more freedom and silly nice things
Starting with the good, it looks fucking amazing. Playing as a hacker is really fun, I also like throwing knifes at people's heads. The story is good, the world is full of things, buuut it could be better.
First of all, what frustrates me the most is that they say that "in Night City looks are everything", but I haven't noticed that. I'm on my third playthrough and I never experienced my looks interfering with anything in this game. The only things that matter are your background and stats. And they only added the option to change appearance and have outfits 2 years after the release?? Oh, and the colors available for hair and stuff are just... sub-optimal. And why can't I have a hair that glows? Or tattoos that glow? (now I'm just being picky)
What I don't like about the story is that it was said that I would have freedom to approach things my way, but actually the main story is very linear. I have to complete all three branches of it to get to the end. Bleh.
Patch 1.61 - Issues during the first act such as not being able to use elevator controls so had to exit the game and relaunch.
Was behind cover, got teleported into the wall and got stuck. Reloading the save didn't work either. Later on in that scene also couldn't use the elevator controls.
Some NPC's flesh tones are not there as in they are white and shimmer. The fighting isn't satisfying as it doesn't seem fluid, is clunky.
I was surprised at all the drinks and buffs they provide in my inventory - why isn't there a quick launch in the item wheel to select these?
In a scene my car was wrecked by NPC as it's part of the story. Okay, so other quest says to wait until car is fixed. Alright I'll just walk to the next quest. Oh a phone call that your ex partners motorcylce is available. Cool, oh wait no info on how to get it. Later on the motorcycle is magically available to use. *Tableflip*
Having finished the game, I can really say that I had a great time with it. The gameplay can feel a little repetitive at times, but that doesn't change the fact that it is really fun, at least for me. The world is beautiful, although a little empty. But the true star of this show is the story and characters. I can't express how I felt when the game ended; there were so many emotions going through me. I legitimately felt like crying. I had some issues with the game earlier, but having enjoyed the story so completely, I have to say that CDPR has really put in the effort to try and fix this game and I have no problem saying that this game is really excellent.
