Cyberpunk 2077

As we get older, playing games feels boring, even though there is something exciting in the game, at least 1-3 hours then we will feel bored again, but it's different with this game, once you play 1 hour you will definitely be attached and really want to spend the whole day playing this game.
This game succeeded in making me feel like a child again who used to spend all my time playing iconic games
and I want to say a special thank you to whoever made panam
(I'm not that rich to buy this game easily, I made the decision to buy this game for days, but when I bought it, it was definitely worth the price,)

Looks like skipping this game for the first 3 years paid off, since the Witcher games have taught me that it's always better to wait for an "enhanced edition". Maybe Cyberpunk 2077 had a shaky start, but as of this version and all the revisions, with the expansion, this game is an absolute masterpiece.
I've loved the Cyberpunk 2020 setting for three decades, Transmetropolitan is one of the best graphic novels ever and I've watched Fight Club more times than I can count. I didn't expect to see all of them reflected in the game. I still didn't expect I'd love Cyberpunk 2077 this much, but it totally got me.
These days, basing a massive game (with a major budget) on 30+ years of old RPG lore just doesn't happen. I was falsely under the impression that 2077 would be a soft reboot, since the attitude of "this much backstory could be a burden in attracting new players, so let's just scrap the old lore" is so common these days. (Fuck you, James Workshop.) I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that pretty much all of the stuff from Cyberpunk 2020 is still canon and even a major part of this game's main story.
If you want maximum appreciation of the setting, in the Steam version's bonus content you can find a complete scan of the Cyberpunk 2020 original rulebook. While most of this time capsule will make you appreciate the details of 2077 worldbuilding, I'd recommend at least reading the short story/adventure "Never Fade Away", originally published in 1988.
The last time I got this emotionally invested and immersed with a game's story and characters was probably back with Mass Effect 2. The Witcher 3 got close, but I like Cyberpunk 2077 even more. The saying "In Cyberpunk, there are no happy endings" is quite true. Half of the possible endings had me in bittersweet tears and the rest were so cripplingly depressing they should come with a medical warning. As it should be. Case never saw Molly again.
One other thing about this game that I don't think has been emphasized enough is the music. It's also something that nobody's dared to do. Instead of licensing famous old 80s/90s hits for nostalgic emotions (like pretty much any movie trailer these days), the music in this game is original. There's something closer to 15 hours of new music and radio stations in this game and it's performed by actual artists working under Cyberpunk pseudonyms, with the titles and lyrics in-universe. Hell, they've even recreated some of the bands and tracks referred to in the old RPG books. While this is already quite insane, the soundtrack just bangs with really diverse genres represented, from black metal to obnoxiously cute lazrpop. I don't think anyone has ever done musical justice to a fictional setting this well.
This would be worth the price just so you can ride your motorcycle around the massive, detailed city (or ride the metro, I guess) while listening to the radio stations and soaking in the ambience of Night City.
This game is one massive love letter to one old cult RPG and it's so weird that it isn't actually made by greedy corpocunt suits who just want to chase profits. Work of art, really. Thank you, CD Projekt and Mike Pondsmith.

This is, quite simply, one of the best games ever made. Full stop.

The combat is amazing. The story is top notch. The art direction is stunning. The VAs are all top notch, and the forced first person perspective means you LIVE as V. Whatever you have heard about the problems this game launched with, they have been fixed and oh so much more.

---{ Graphics }---
☑ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☑ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☑ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☑ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☑ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☑ 9
☐ 10

They did it. A solid and fun RPG today, but I think as time progresses, I think it will be eventually remembered as a beautiful and poignant story and piece of art, like how we view a classic work of literature today, like a Joseph Conrad novel or For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (both authors works are referenced which the writers make clear nods to). I'm so happy I played it and avoided all spoilers. Absorb the story and world as you would a good book or TV series.
The best way to describe the relationship of the main game and the DLC's attributes is using a real world analogy: If the main game (NC) is Hong Kong, then Phantom Liberty (Dogtown) is the Kowloon Walled City. If you think you knew Hong Kong, wait until you learn how insane the Kowloon Walled City was. Apart from the main themes of the Cyberpunk RPG like capitalism gone amok, I liked how the game raises a point how our mortality forces us to question our life choices and the meaning of life. And how time waits for no one.
What really shocked me was how well written and how fun Phantom Liberty DLC was, and how it even surpassed the main story line in story quality, characters and world-building at times.
Regarding lifepaths, personally I think corpo V is the best V since it narratively ties in very well with Arasaka and the price of being a corporate wage slave and the corpo opening scene is my personal favourite of all three, and it even gives the opportunity to show how bloodthirsty the world is and allow V's voice actor to show both strength and vulnerability in a single scene. Corpo V also has some great lines I love. But streetkid and nomad lifepaths also ties in very nicely with achieving your best, and the finding your family in life respectively. Each lifepath also gets 1 unique mission. But ultimately the lifepaths is mostly for flavour and does not affect V's main story in significant ways.
This game affected me quite personally. Some parts I even cried, or even felt that visceral rage at the injustice or powerlessness of some characters, which no other game I played has ever done before. Wonderful voice acting, character design, character animation, fun combat, music, world building. The last time I felt the same way was The Last Of Us released almost a decade ago, and that really got me to seeing video games seriously as a new emerging medium for good stories. And good stories do not necessarily must have happy endings, but good ones meant to provoke thought and feelings, and the writers understood that incredibly well.
I played Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, The Longest Journey, Dreamfall and somehow I feel that they taken the best parts of those games which are flawed in their own ways (some more than others) and put it into Cyberpunk 2077 and the DLC. Really helps that you get to pilot a robot in a point and click adventure style reminiscent of the Longest Journey. I was impressed that the DLC has that Cynosure horror level which also surprised me, a nod to their ability to integrate the psychological horror of Alien Isolation. Perhaps I'll go so far as to say it surpasses the quality and dread you will feel from the "Ocean House Hotel" level within Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. Not to mention Judy's cabin mission and underwater level is unforgettable.
The music in this game is fantastic. Even the character creation menu has its own theme song, and that is one of my favourite pieces. There is even a Chopin piece played by Arasaka's sister, a complete break from the usual electronic or rock music played in the BGM and in world music. That should tell you how awesome the music is. You even get to hear some of Silverhand's band Samurai's rock music pieces. There is a whole station playing songs from Nina Kraviz as you drive through Night City. She even appears as a minor ripperdoc character, which is ironic because she is a trained dentist while V makes an offhand remark to Viktor that they feel like being at a dentist's.
This game had characters that talked like human beings, have their own fears and desires which drive their characters which drive the story. Cherami Leigh has delivered one of the best performances in this game as V, and she has acting range, from joy to anger to fear and despair, you'll feel every moment of it. It certainly helps that Keanu Reeves plays Johnny Silverhand and V's wingman, and is with you almost throughout the entire story, and it would be a completely different game without him throwing his opinions, grows as a character and has his plot brings in the same existential questions about the nature of consciousness as Soma did. I expected Idris Elba to become Stringer Bell from the Wire, but what I saw was a restrained performance of a conflicted and world weary government agent, but in a way that is realistic and still ultimately human. Carla Tassara as Judy really performed and gave one of the most heartbreaking and real performances I felt in a video game ever in one of the scenes, felt too close to home at one point that I had to stop and take a breather. Erica Lindbeck as Misty in both the main game and DLC as V's mother figure had her moments as well, especially in the storage room outside the El Coyote Cojo Bar (another extremely real scene) and also at the ending of the DLC on the staircase. Michael Gregory as Johnny Mnemonic's Spider inspired Viktor Vektor delivers some great scenes as V's father figure in the main game and DLC. The scene where Arasaka Sr and Jr are fighting in Japanese is on another level, like you are watching a forbidden family drama unfold in a foreign language. There are many more voice actors that bring in their best in this, so it is best you experience their performances yourself.
They got into some deserved criticism over game breaking bugs or over-promising in their marketing. But at this point, I think it just became irrelevant in hindsight with the eventual fixes and expectations becoming re-balanced after COVID. Also helped that the Cyberpunk anime on Netflix and DLC attracted new players who were previously uninterested in the game, and see the game for what it is: a masterpiece that needed more time for polish, minor features and fixes. They did not compromise on the story and characters and acting and world building, and that everything technical can always be patched in the end.
It is a shame that the REDengine it runs on will no longer be used in the next Cyberpunk and choosing Unreal instead: this game alone proves it can be used for horror, RPGs (Vampire the Masquerade cough cough with safe areas), racing etc.
I don't know how the team in CD Projekt Red pulled this off, but thank you for making a piece of art that will surely be remembered fondly for generations.
This review is borderline rambling because I'm speaking from the heart for the most part. It's better you experience it first hand yourself instead of watching someone else play it over YouTube because there is much more depth and beauty in this game that should be experienced first hand. If you're still skeptical, I can only quote Silverhand in Keanu Reeves's best scene in the game as he delivers his monologue (or manifesto? hehe), followed by his best line in the game: "You still don't see it. But you will one day." Every time I think about the ending of the DLC, see my world I live in and read the papers, sometimes that quote pops up now in my head reminding me how Silverhand is ultimately right in the end.

---{ Graphics }---
☑ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☑ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☑ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☑ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☑ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☑ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☑ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☑ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

For me this is the end of the Night City story.
I completed all the tasks, unlocked all the endings and completed the DLC.
Honestly, I actually cried a lot in this game. haha. It was also fun, such a contrast in the game allowed us to move on, gave us hope for something good. But I can say that Cyberpunk 2077 will never end well. You have to make hard choices, but in the end you will still lose something.
I fell in love with this game and would like to forget everything that happened in it, so that I could plunge into Night City again like the first time.