Cyberpunk 2077

Unlike CDPR, I finished the game.

So I am over 60 years old and fairly new to gaming in general. Jumping from World of Warships (fairly new at that also) to this gives you an idea. Before this it had been many years since playing ANY games. So, I am floored by this game. To me its amazing. Now I set the combat at an easy level and I bumble around in here and am in no hurry. I explore around sometimes doing nothing but looking around. I have gone through a fair amount of the story line - again - its all amazing to me. In short I love it. I now am branching to more games, as I find I enjoy playing more then one game at a time. I love the characters of this game, the visuals of it, and have no complaints. Occasionally I run across a very minor glitch of getting stuck or something, but this does not bother me. I do not expect perfection. But I want to emphasize this is very rare. Well done to the developers of this game.

I bought this game on sale for $70 AUD, and I had bought in to any hype or watched any trailers. I watched a couple reviews, and bought this at a sale price to see what the fuss was about.
I've finished the game, but I won't be playing it again. Please let me explain why I still recommend this.
The Cyberpunk world is beautiful. The Prologue of the game shows you a living, corpo infested city that is alive with things to do. The montage of you and Jackie plays out in hot spots around Night City, dancing, drinking, having a sick time. You fly in an AV, you take on the biggest Corporation in night city with the hopes of becoming legends.
Then the real game starts and you realise Night City is nothing but a back drop for you to do missions in. You can't actually do anything. You can't sit and eat, get drunk and stumble around, fuck around with the 'Privatised, corrupt NCPD' (more on that later), watch brain dances, go to clubs and dance, it's just a map that exists for you to drive through.
The City's NPCs are garbage, they don't respond to anything (Patch 1.22-1.23). The traffic is still useless and have no mind of their own. I parked my car on the road and it just caused a massive line up of cars just sitting there waiting.
Driving sucks and unless you REALLY want a nice car there is absolutely NO reason to purchase any of the vehicles that are available to you because the driving mechanics don't justify spending that kind of money. Why would I spent $100k on a car that's gonna slide around like it's on an ice rink, when I can just steal a car to do that for me? Or just fast travel?
So many massive buildings that you just can't go inside. So many restaurants and street vendors that only exist to fill
space.
The Police in this game, advertised as corrupt, nasty power abusing thugs do NOTHING. And if you do run into them, they will spawn IN FRONT OF YOU and blast you to pieces. There's no bribing, no arrests, no dirty cops asking you to do jobs for them. They don't even drive around. It's a SERIOUSLY missed opportunity considering the amount of NPCD side gigs you can do.
Why couldn't have these been used as side missions from cops trying to blackmail you? You commit a crime, get a warrant, a cop tries to arrest you. You could either pay your way out or do a job for him. This could be linked to any of the NPCD gigs in the city. But they're not. The cops do not play a massive part in the world and it's seriously best if you ignore them completely. Because they always ignore you. When they don't ignore you, it's a broken mess that is pointless and adds nothing to the gameplay.
You might think all of this sounds like nit picking, and you're right. But this game sets the expectation that Night City is your playground, and it's a city that is alive and can be lived in. It's not. It's just a map to do shit in.
This for me broke my immersion, but for others the beauty of the cyberpunk city may be enough to keep them interested. However, I really doubt it.
The combat is fun. You can specialise in blades or blunt weapons, firearms, hacking, and stealth. I found myself using stealth and quick hacks a lot, and relying heavily of Tech weapons to do serious damage to people.
Stealthing around, breaking people's necks, dumping the bodies, hacking security cameras and turrets to work in your favour were some of the best times in combat.
Once gunfights started, the AI were either super smart or super dumb dumb, and once I found a Power Rifle all encounters were so damn easy it was a cakewalk from then on out. I played on the 'hard' difficulty for reference.
BUT this wasn't a problem for me. I don't think the weapons are supposed to balanced. I think it the point of the weapons and crafting and modifications is to become a seriously violent and dangerous cyberpunk beast and you can absolutely achieve that. How you wish to do that is up to you, and the combat for me was overall acceptable.
Character customisation is fine, but you don't see your character enough anyway so don't worry too much about it.
The loot, namely the clothing, all look fuckin absurd. By the end of the game you will be wearing so much mismatched nonsense for the sake of armour and clothing mods.
There's no transmog either so be prepared for your character to look really, REALLY stupid.
Now we move onto the Characters and Story. SPOILERS
You want to be a legend in night city? Want to climb to the ranks and be a top dog in the Mercenary World?
I never felt this to be the case. The main story revolves around you trying to save your own life and get Johnny Silverhand out of your head. You'll do missions for some big corpo players and also some prominent gangs in Night City. But none of it is for glory, all of it is for saving your life. No one wants to help you unless you can do something for them. Kill some other gang member, steal some shit, kill some other dude. Find out that the person you did all this for can't help you, or they just die anyway. Your character becomes desperate and by the end of the main story you're either making a deal with a corpo devil, or going out in a blaze of glory.
THE SIDE MISSIONS however are where the meat of this game is and you should spend all of your time doing these.
That doesn't mean these are perfect, and I'll explain below.
You will meet people who will play a big role in your character development and main story through completing side missions. Some side missions are also just cool insights into the cyberpunk world that REALLY needed to be fleshed out.
Here's my example.
You will do a mission for a Jefferson and Elizabeth Peralez. Jefferson is a candidate for Mayor of Night City. He has goals, he seems pretty reasonable, and you go to investigate a break in of their home.
You find some things that don't add up. A secret room in their house, antennas and cables leading to the roof, and then you spot a van outside the building.
After chasing the van, you end up a huge firefight. Once you waste them, you hack the van and find out that these group of hackers are literally changing Peralezs' mind.
They are altering his memories, his personality, they are changing him completely so when he gets elected mayor his decisions will favour these hacker's intentions. A crazy, dystopian nightmare of mind altering control.
And this whole time, Elizabeth was aware of it. She had no choice but to go on with it, to not tell him what was going on.
You go to meet up with Jefferson, to either explain to him to situation or give him no clues.
Before you do however, you are contacted by the hackers. They blacken your vision, and warn you to stay out of it.
This fucked me up. And even Johnny, the rebellious anti corpo blaze of glory bad ass warns you to stay out of this one. It's too risky. I wanted to find these guys. These hackers who are controlling a politicians brain, some crazy cyberpunk shit that made my skin crawl.
But after you tell him, you receive a few text messages, and that's it. Mission over. You never hear from them again.
....WHY?????
This was my general view of the side missions of CP2077. So damn good, so damn close to being a fantastic mission, but they all just scrape the surface of something with the potential to be MUCH bigger.
THESE missions made me feel like becoming a legend of Night City. Taking down people like this. Making a name for myself, but it never happens.
After 75 Hours of game time I can say that I enjoyed what Cyberpunk 2077 had to offer.
But at the same time, I'm disappointed that this was ALL it had to offer.
No DLC can fix the broken world, the lack of world development, The main missions that end SUPER quickly, or the side missions that burn out right before they get really good.
I recommend this game if cyberpunk is something you're interested in. But be prepared for a basic RPG game, glittered in a cyberpunk aesthetic.

Edits were made for grammar and spelling.
Honestly, in spite of the failed promises of CDPR, especially at launch, if I take the emotions out of it, this was still a really fun game for me. The TL;DR of this review? 8/10 Give it a shot, but walk into this experience not with the intention of making your own specific character and doing a lot of heavy "custom" RP (i.e. "I'm going to make my V be a corpo stooge this run" won't be possible. V, male/female/neither, is a pre-defined character more in line with Cmdr Shepard in Mass Effect than The Courier in Fallout:NV) instead think of this experience like an open-world FPS campaign with some more significant choices thrown in to influence the outcome and you can customize your character's appearance.
Now, I recognize that the CONS section is longer and more involved than the PROS, but quantity does not outweigh quality in my opinion.
PROS
- The world is *genuinely* immersive in the macroscopic view. Crowds seem to bustle, music fits the setting, traffic jams occur, Night City's appearance and soundscape are genuinely, dare I say it, "Breathtaking"
- The characters, especially 3/4 of the potential love interests are solid characters in their own right and I thoroughly enjoy their stories.
- The Main Story, while having it's odd ticking bomb type timeline which will be mentioned later, is honestly pretty solid. You've got basically 3 choices for finales (a fourth hidden one that's exceptionally difficult), the characters are honestly pretty in-depth and believable, the stakes fit the Cyberpunk (as a copywritten universe specifically) vibe, and the ending I feel leaves us with some really awesome potential for a DLC expansion onto the end of the story or a sequel depending on your choices.
- For me personally, Keanu's performance, is a highlight. I believe him to be a genuinely solid character, well acted, if occasionally a bit clumsily written (mostly in the dialogues between him and V, their dynamic can feel a little confusing like seeing their relationship evolve but out of order or something at times). I recognize some apparently find his performance sub-par, but I disagree and frankly I don't think I as an actor (granted, mostly stage musicals) would have made any different character choices if I had his role. I believe it to be well-executed on that front.
- The straight male, gay female, and straight female romances are genuinely, I think, extremely well written with the gay female romance being honest to goodness one of the best love stories I've played through. Hell, even in my first run as a male who can't romance her, I genuinely enjoyed her story and the friendship presented. On par, IMO with the Tali-Shepard romance or the Garrus bro-mance in Mass Effect.
- When appropriately leveled or slightly overleveled, the gunplay feels genuinely pretty nice IMO. There are definitely better games, but for a studio's first outing on FPS, this is a serious win.
- The aesthetic of the outfits are genuinely fantastic to me. Personally, I ignore the core stats until it's clear a clothing item of a given style is just plainly under-leveled, but usually you'll find a suitable replacement with better stats well before the stats become a problem. I think to have a better time, just look as fresh as you want, unless you're playing on the highest difficulties, I frankly don't see much benefit to optimizing your armor. Treat it like armor in Dark Souls, it's basically aesthetic
CONS
- THE TIMELINE PRESENTED IN THE MAIN PLOT IS TOO SHORT TO REALISTICALLY RP YOURSELF INTO PLAYING THE SIDE QUESTS. Without going into spoilers, the main story pretty quickly after the tutorial/prologue gives you a nebulous timeline of, "a couple weeks" with some heavy stakes attached which frankly is not enough time to *really* do anything else believably. But a lot of the best material is in the side-quests. So I honestly just kinda handwave and imagine that for most of my run, I'm still playing V's backstory pre-inciting incident until I hit the last couple missions where the main-plot becomes relevant again. This one there's no fixing unless they rerecord some lines or something and as a heavy RP-focused player who loves exploring worlds, this is my biggest individual gripe.
- Still a wee bit buggy/unoptimized. I play with a fairly up-to-date middle upper range PC with a 2070 Super and there are times where the frame rate will drop to ~50 from the 90+ on 1080p and ultra settings. It's far better than it used to be, I'd even go so far as to say it's less buggy than most games on release nowadays, but if you've got a low tolerance, stay away.
- Melee combat feels wonky af and enemies can be bullet spongey, though these have both improved. Melee combat might not be fixable or at least not easily, the bullet spongey thing though can still be improved a bit.
- Driving feels weird at times (honestly, if you play a nomad, will quickly have *the* best vehicle in terms of speed, acceleration, and handling in my opinion and it's basically free). Vehicles are "floaty", deceleration seems almost logarithmic than linear on keyboard and mouse, Minimap is still a bit too small. This is all fixable.
- The Straight Male romaceable character, if you are RPing either a purely lesbian female character or even a bi female character who's loyal to their girlfriend, doesn't seem to take polite hints of lack of interest to back off. He's otherwise a really sweet and genuinely good guy, but it sucks to the point that I, when playing a female character already in a relationship with someone else or otherwise uninterested, will avoid the last mission with this guy. Not likely if ever to be fixed.
- The City's immersion falls short upon scrutiny at the micro level. NPCs seem to go nowhere and panic for almost no reason, there are no other motorcycles on the roads (plenty parked, none driving), and there are no roaming cops/gang patrols which kinda hurts too. These are all fixable.
- The fact that clothes/weapons can be the exact same kind, but have drastically different stats kinda bugs me. I wish they'd just have like 3-5 tiers of any one weapon/clothing item which indicates overall effectiveness/damage rating/quality and maybe even make the items of a given tier have a different appearance determined by it (i.e. tier 1 handgun of this model has visible rust/pitting/dings/nicks, vs tier 4 looking fresh off the table of a custom gunsmith). In the end though, this is an extremely minor gripe and not likely to be fixed.
- You can't just transmog your outfit overtop whatever you have currently equipped to make the optimizers who want to RP happy. At least to my knowledge, this hasn't been addressed outside of mods but really shouldn't be *that* difficult to implement.
- Still no haircuts or customizable tattoos or even more overtly visible body mods either in general or just after character creation. I feel these are still pretty core to the Cyberpunk experience as an aesthetic and idea, yet do not exist yet outside of mods to my knowledge. This is a super easy fix and I hope they include it in the big update they're planning to drop soon that I've heard rumors about.

If you've been thinking about buying, I'd recommend doing so in the current sale or Winter Sale. I've installed some mods this past week and they really do improve the game to the point to where I'd say it's worth a buy, even at full price. I've got about 15 installed right now, and they all work great so far. The awesome part is they are simply small config type files that are only KBs in size. I think the largest mod I installed so far was 2MB. All you do is download and then extract the contents into the root installation folder....quickest mods I've ever done. I'm probably going to make a guide that'll include installation instructions as well as a one file package that includes all the best mods.
There are sooo many mods out there, and some are highly configurable, rivaling the best popular mod-able games. These mods fix bugs, game-play balancing, broken perks, life-path bonuses, gang traits, UI improvements, vehicle handling, better NPCs and crowds, traffic, better melee etc. They also can add cut content like street vendor trading and even wall climbing. You can even unlock the ability to romance characters you'd otherwise not be able to (I'm going to bone Judy Alvarez as a male V, haha).
If you have the cash and are even interested in the game I think you should take the plunge. $30 is a steal for what it can become with just a couple minutes of post installation tweaking.
P.S. - the official patch 1.5 is going to drop in a few months when they release the next gen console version of the game. It's supposed to be a huge update with lots of fixes and perhaps even restored content. That patch (and future patches) will most likely (hopefully) negate the need for mods. I know now it's definitely possible to fix this game and make it what we all expected it to be...the question is will it be done officially or by the modding community (so far the modding community has a massive head start).
P.S.S. - My opinion of the publisher has not changed....f*ck 'em. The devs are not to blame, but the suits are. The launch was an abomination, something I'll never forget. I'll never again buy a game at launch from CDPR. Yes, I'm recommending it now, but only thanks to the modders. Buy as cheap as you absolutely can.
EDIT: These are the mods I have installed and working as of 12/29/21. These can be found on nexusmods (except the "disable auto save", which I made).
- Cyber Engine Tweaks (REQUIRED Prerequisite)
- Redscript (REQUIRED Prerequisite)
- Full Gameplay Rebalance
- Wall Hang (activated by Q key)
- Lifepath Bonuses and Gang-Corp Traits
- AI Netrunners Enhanced (No Imminent Sy...
- Flib's UI Improvements
- Cyber Vehicle Overhaul
- Cyber Drifting
- Crowds and Traffic
- Performance Boost
- Sensible Stamina and Athletics
- Street Vendors
- Better Melee
- StreetStyle - Immersive Fashion System
- Simple XP Multiplier
- Weather Probability Rebalance (No Sandst...
- More Gore
- Better Finer Rain
- No Intro Videos - With News Report
- Improved Mini Map Zoom
- Draw Distance Boost
- Enhanced Police
- DLSS 2.3
- Extra Vehicle Controls (Controller Version)
- Better Vehicle First Person
- Full Armor Rebalance
- Eyes LOD Fix
- Disable Auto-save (See my guide)
- GTA Fast Travel
- Tyler’s Cool-Ass Patch - INSTALL LAST

come back in 2077 when its finished

Not a bad game, but I would wait another year before playing it.