Sorry to say, but patch 1.1 broken my game...
1.06 was working completely fine, now flickering lights, loading textures and volumetrics, tpose every corner, more jagged edges, missing textures(or holes in walls). Now this game look like alpha :(
So after about 100h, this game is overall above average. The world looks great (if you have a $2000 PC, a ryzen 1600 and gtx 1070 has to run at low 1080p to get 60fps) and the main characters are interesting. But I have a few gripes...
- empty world, most quests are boring and feel like a chore
- AI non existant, youtube a few videos on this. The police might as well not even bother chasing because you can always get rid of them in under 10s
- very demanding to run, like I said. Unless you have a top tier gpu or use DLSS, even 1080p 60fps high detail is hard to maintain. Im sure it looks great if you can run it though
- NOT AN RPG. The game plays more like and Action - Adventure, but some won't mind
- Starting class is pointless. Played corpo to start and then the bandit (or whatever its called) for the second playthrough. No difference after 30 minutes
- Limited customization. Cant change car parts/colors, guns, clothes or armor colors, no "home" or base changes
- bugs and glitches, to a point. I have only had the game crash 2-3 times, but there have been plenty bugs with AI NPCs, driving and cars, quests, ect.
Im sure it will be a great game in a year or two, but right now its just "alright". IMO unless you have a high end PC or really want to play now, just wait until 2022 to buy CP2077
Here's a brief, non-exhaustive list of things the game DOESN'T give you;
- Character customization past the initial character-creation (no really, there's NONE!)
- A.I. that can match games from 15 years ago
- Wallrunning with the Mantis Blades
- Meaningful choice-and-consequence (seriously; 98% of your choices do NOT matter!)
- The ability to use an NPC as a human shield WHILE firing a weapon
- Vehicle customization
- Weapon customization (a scope and silencer isn't enough)
- Player home customization
- The ability to remap keys (double-tap to dodge... really, CDPR?!?)
- Interactions with NPCs (you can't converse with 99% of them)
- Interactions with the world (no gambling, no roller-coaster rides, no train rides, no NOTHING)
- Replayability
- Destructability of the game world and its objects (GTA 5 has waaaay more of it)
- An immersive, next-gen U.I. (the U.I. is as basic as it gets)
- A reputation/wanted/morality/faction system
- Balanced combat
- Balanced economy
- Any hope of the future of CDPR...
The complete list of things the game DOES give you;
- Buyers remorse!
- Proof that there are no 'good guys' in this corrupt industry
- A gorgeous looking open world (when it's not glitching out...)
- Proof that many so-called 'reviewers' are gullible at best - bought and payed for at worst!
- All the reason you ever needed to NEVER PRE-ORDER!!!
I will revisit the game in 2022 to see what - if any - meaningful improvements have been made, but in the meantime, I will be replaying the vastly superior open-world RPG games from 10+ years ago.
First impressions matter, right? Well, the first impression was great. Seriously. And then something something and boom everything's shite.
The graphics are top notch, no complaints at all here (if your PC can handle it). The gameplay feels quite good and smooth, different weapons actually behave differently and are fun to use.
Sounds are great aswell, the english voice acting is on point.
And well .. there they were.. my first impressions.
The story was goddamn great ... in the very first Act of the game, then everything goes south. Whilst the story is interesting, it isn't good, it's disappointing at the very best. The game tries to build up tention but "Hey, have you done those side missions yet? And have you already beat up those thugs and bought that car?" There is simply too much unnecessary stuff to do.
Besides the very weak story there are still the bugs everyone was talking about at launch.
Wanna climb up that wall to get to the mission quicker? How about the physic engine just kills you instead.
Want to hop in your car real quick? How about the HUD gets stuck and requires you to tinker with the game to fix it.
Got that cool new quick hack thing to lure enemies to you? Yeah, fuck you too, imma teleport back to where I started walking.
The crafting "mechanics" and the skill trees are mostly a joke. Nothing much to say here. You can craft a weapon that will be obsolete 2 minutes later because you already killed an enemy and got a better one.
To put it short, I honestly don't know what took them about 8 years to release this game. There is nothing major about it. There is nothing that made think like: "Woaaaahh that's sooooo cool, omg!!11!1"
The game as a whole gets about 3,7/10. If you really want to see a good story, character development and an ending that feels good, whether it is the "good" or the "bad" ending spend your money elsewhere. If you like cluttered games with too many side missions and random stuff, you might very well enjoy this.
I almost don't want to spend the time writing this review as I don't want to give any more time to this game or quite honestly this company, so I'll make it brief.
If at this point you have been living in a cave and don't know about the hype and under-delivery that is the launch, I won't beat a dead horse here. There are countless youtube videos going in depth as to why the launch was bad.
What I will say is that depsite all the flaws in the performance and the bugs and crashes (of which there are many), this game is the most vanilla 'RPG' that I have ever had the mifortune of spending time on.
The thing that blows my mind is that they had the perfect oppurtunity to make a game world so full of colour and interest. Something that was truly different. A futuristic world set in a distopian society where anything you can dream of is possible, and they settled for a piss poor character creation (which is buggy. How do you have bugs in a menu for character creation lol?). The vanilla V that you make cannot be visually upgraded with any cyberware. All the NPC's walking around with awesome and disturbing faces and you cannot change anything more than the colour of your eyes and your genitals.
The story. Oooh boy where do I start? I'll just put it this way, I have never been so bored and uninterested in an RPG in all my gaming life. I attempted multiple times to really try and get into the story. To ignore all the hate online and the reviews and just get into the world and the characters and give it a crack. I tried 4 playthroughs and I didn't even bother finishing the main storyline. The characters are empty and vanilla, and the game does nothign to make you care for a single one of them. When Jackie dies right in the begining I was like "Sucks I guess... Anyway!"
Two things to remember, never preorder games, and vote with your wallet