Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is, I found, a very enjoyable game, before anything else: regardless of whatever stigma the game has received by many who have/have not played it, the game is a good time given that you are capable of running it. If you fit within that criteria, I would say that you might have some fun with the game, and I would recommend it. That, of course, does not discredit it's numerous flaws: I won't add onto the dogpile too much, but the game has it's er... share of bugs. Most funny and harmless, others blatantly game-breaking. I didn't have any that seriously damaged my game, but a few nearly did. One in particular nearly ruined my save as I attempted to finish the lengthy mission that comes at the end of the tutorial, with the saving grace being that exiting the game and re-entering it solved the problem. All of that of course is worth mentioning, but I do think that it's positives outweigh it's negatives.
What Cyberpunk lacks in technical polish, it makes up for in it's writing and characters. A multitude of characters that appear throughout the game were fun and likable. Each of the major characters received their own separate arcs which give you ample time to engage with them, their surroundings and their view on the hellish landscape that is Night City. While it may seem formulaic, each of these characters are introduced in a very organic way, and each of their stories are so distinct that it never comes off that way. Standouts include Judy, Panam, River, Kerry, Jackie & Johnny, with some minor characters I enjoyed including Viktor, Misty, Blue Moon, & Gerald. Frankly, the worst thing I can say about the characters is that some simply didn't receive enough attention, but I don't find that to be a major issue at all. The story was engaging, which I found to be quite surprising given my personal track record of finding many western RPG's stories to be uninteresting, but Cyberpunk 2077 managed to leave a solid impression from beginning to end with some moments I will not forget soon. A stand-out moment in particular occurs close to the end of the game where, as you sit atop the roof of a building with Misty debating your seemingly inevitable mortality, the two of you engage in a brief discussion about Jackie, your recently deceased buddy and her boyfriend. The gentle way she speaks to you about how Jackie felt not being sure of how to tell his mother about his criminal affiliations, and tying that into V's inability to cope with their fate felt so beautiful and painful. The game never lacked effort in it's writing, and that's something I'm glad to see does not get lumped in with the technical problems amongst the majority.
I also think it's worth mentioning just how high quality the voice-acting is in this game. A particular performance that comes to mind is actually Cherami Leigh's role as the main character, V. I cannot speak on the male voice as I have not played the game with that voice, but Cherami Leigh did a stellar job giving a stern, no nonsense straight-to-the-point sentiment with a level of consistency that is quite impressive given the volume of work required. Not a single person I find gave a bad performance though, and it gave the game a major emphasis on proper world-building that was a little lacking in other aspects. In particular, the world design itself. The attention to detail within the world is genuinely stunning, but the lack of content to be found in it really hampers the ability to engage with it in a way that doesn't feel like a video game. It's such a shame too, since so much effort clearly went into making the world feel full with life and detail, but having nothing to do within it besides side-missions and shopping for guns, clothes and cybernetics diminish much of that work.
Regardless of the problems it has, as long as you are capable of playing the game at a stable framerate with good visual videlity, then I would say it's worth your time. It's no masterpiece by any means, but there's so much love put into it that is oftentimes unintentionally, but sometimes intentionally ignored by many because of what the game does wrong. While I don't want to blame people for being upset for such an understandable reason, it does upset me myself to see this game get tarnished when it does so much right.

First off all, this is not a bad game thanks to the excellent writing and storytelling in the main and side quests that CDPR is known for. I did not expect this game to cure cancer and heal my broken relationships, but only for it to be close to what was advertised by CDPR through their insane amount of marketing done for this game. And this is why I am giving this game a negative review, because I havent seen this level of misleading and false advertising since Watch Dogs back in 2014.

First of all let's get the pros out of the way. The gunplay is fairly well-done, with slick gun animation and believable recoil to make the gun feels good to shoot. The graphics and art design of this game is absolutely incredible. I am not even playing on max settings and this is one of the best looking open world I have ever seen. The story is what you would expect from CDPR.

However this is pretty much where the pros end. The game, while have decent gunplay, have very few guns making the looting no where near as exciting as a game like Borderlands. Since CP2077 is an RPG, the enemy can be quite bullet spongy, which would be fine if the ragdoll physics is not so atrocious in this game. Enemies have the same repetitive animation when getting shot, making the shooting feels boring as you sit behind a corner and dump entire magazines into one npc. Melee combat is horrible. It was fun slicing people with the katana for the first 15 minutes until you realize that the have the same animation for cutting people's heads off over and over again. It is also super janky, especially the hand combat and you can clearly tell that melee not the focus of the developers compared to guns.

This game also wasted tons of potential. CDPR released a trailer on the different gangs of night city and showing how different they are, leading people to believe that these gangs may play a big role in the game, perhaps the player may even take part in gangs war for territories in Night City. However these gangs are nothing more than generic gangsters put in different coats of paint. Outside of cutscenes and scripted sequences, the all behave the same in the open world as dumb targets for the player to shoot at in boring repetitive open world activities. There are different types of open world activities such as assault in progress or organised crime, but honestly they are basically the same with some having more dumb enemies than others. I got so bored of how repetitive these are that by the end of the game when I have enough money I did not even bother with them. The only semi interesting characters in these gangs are the bosses that give you jobs, but even them are only slightly more than a glorified quests dispenser. They give you Gigs which are basically contracts, but most of them are so uninteresting and simple compared to the excellent witcher contracts in Witcher 3 where they can be just as good as some side quests. They also made a big deal out of life paths which literally have no impact on the game beside giving some unique dialog options. I honestly don't see a point in replaying this game just to try out another life path

Night CIty is visually beautiful and is an absolute joy to explore...for the first 3-4 hours. Then you realise how fake and superficial the open world is underneath the graphics. There is no interactivity between the players and the world, there is nothing for the player to do in the open world. I love how CDPR used the introduction cutscene in the gameplay trailer, showing the player hanging out with npcs, going clubbing, finding entertainment in the city. YOU LITERALLY CANNOT DO ANY OF THESE THINGS IN THE GAME. There is only 3 types of vendors in the city, you cant even go to a car store to buy a car but by them via text messages (like wtf?). No barber shop, no plastic surgeon, no cool interactive restaurant or cafe or pub that you can drink and talk to NPCs at, no form of entertainment that you can do (clubs, bowling, pool, sports, etc). The elevator in big buildings only take you to 2 or 3 floors that are relevant to quests. Most of the buildings are not accessible but trick you into thinking that you can with high enough level (you cant so dont bother). The world is just dead, and this is make exponentially worse by braindead AI that make AI from GTA 3 two decades ago looks next gen.

The AI in this game might be the worst I have ever seen in a modern big budget open world games. I have not play a game in which the AI literally do not know how to drive since GTA 2, and that was a 2D top down game. The AI car follow a preset path, and they will stop in one place forever if you stop in front of them. This is why there is no police car chases, because the police literally cannot follow you in a car. There are 2 types of NPCs in this game. First is the NPCs that the dev glued in a single place and do the same thing 24/7 to give a fake sense of the NPCs doing different things in denser areas such as markets. They cant do anything that is not the specific thing that the devs coded them to do and are basically mannequins to give a perception that the city is alive which quickly wears off since they literally do nothing else. The second types are the generic pedestrian that only do 4 things: walk, stand, run away or crouch down when scared. The police system is complete broken and only further tell me that the devs did not care about the open world at all but only pay attentions to what happen in a quests. And they have the balls to advertise this game as having a NEXT GEN open world.

This game clearly show the lack of experience and resources that CDPR have when it comes to game of this scale, and the shady and dishonest marketing strategy they used should be criticized.