6.5/10
Glitches and alleged unplayability aside, the game is (design wise) a pretty interesting attempt at merging immersive sim, open world, and rpg mechanics. Just like TW3, it doesn't work at all: as an immersive sim, it's far too easy and can be mastered without experimenting with different approaches or strategies; as an open world, it has very good subplots and characters but it's imbued with ludonarrative dissonances that make it very hard to feel immersed; as a rpg, just like TW3, it's far too similar to an action movie - every quest, being it primary or secondary (not to mention the other activities) ends up in killing dozens of enemies, making stuff explode, and so on and so forth. You just cannot choose to avoid violence. It is also basically impossible to roleplay here: V has their own voice, feelings, and choices (and you are not even controlling them, at time you just switch your playable character without any reason or narrative coherence). Also, V's growth and improvements only revolve around killing or hacking stuff.
Just like TW3 (I cannot but repeat it: people went crazy for that game, which instead has almost the exact same flaws as this one), it is also rather fragile for what concerns its narrative: it's full of plot holes you just can't ignore, characters act and react haphazardly all the time, V changes their mind from beginning to end without telling you, Silverhand is basically bipolar.
Just like TW3, to appreciate Cyberpunk 2077 you must take, understand, and play it as pure playable worldbuilding. And the game is just brilliant at building a huge and multifaceted cyberpunk world. All the cyberpunk themes, aesthetics, tropes, and archetypes you can think of are there, wonderfully merged. It's basically a playable hyper-capitalistic dystopia, a nightmare in which you cannot but perceive reality as an artifact (and in facts when your system malfunctions the world as a whole glitches), yourself as a technology, and society as a byproduct of economy and exploitation. Plots and subplots may be dissonant and conflictual but they so brilliantly and effectively address the main philosophy of cyberpunk you just cannot but fall in love with them.
Cyberpunk 2077 is not a good piece of interactive fiction. It's neither a good game nor a good piece of narrative. And yet it's a playable compendium of cyberpunk imageries. Which is great. Just like TW3 was a great compendium of dark medieval fantasy.
Glitches and alleged unplayability aside, the game is (design wise) a pretty interesting attempt at merging immersive sim, open world, and rpg mechanics. Just like TW3, it doesn't work at all: as an immersive sim, it's far too easy and can be mastered without experimenting with different approaches or strategies; as an open world, it has very good subplots and characters but it's imbued with ludonarrative dissonances that make it very hard to feel immersed; as a rpg, just like TW3, it's far too similar to an action movie - every quest, being it primary or secondary (not to mention the other activities) ends up in killing dozens of enemies, making stuff explode, and so on and so forth. You just cannot choose to avoid violence. It is also basically impossible to roleplay here: V has their own voice, feelings, and choices (and you are not even controlling them, at time you just switch your playable character without any reason or narrative coherence). Also, V's growth and improvements only revolve around killing or hacking stuff.
Just like TW3 (I cannot but repeat it: people went crazy for that game, which instead has almost the exact same flaws as this one), it is also rather fragile for what concerns its narrative: it's full of plot holes you just can't ignore, characters act and react haphazardly all the time, V changes their mind from beginning to end without telling you, Silverhand is basically bipolar.
Just like TW3, to appreciate Cyberpunk 2077 you must take, understand, and play it as pure playable worldbuilding. And the game is just brilliant at building a huge and multifaceted cyberpunk world. All the cyberpunk themes, aesthetics, tropes, and archetypes you can think of are there, wonderfully merged. It's basically a playable hyper-capitalistic dystopia, a nightmare in which you cannot but perceive reality as an artifact (and in facts when your system malfunctions the world as a whole glitches), yourself as a technology, and society as a byproduct of economy and exploitation. Plots and subplots may be dissonant and conflictual but they so brilliantly and effectively address the main philosophy of cyberpunk you just cannot but fall in love with them.
Cyberpunk 2077 is not a good piece of interactive fiction. It's neither a good game nor a good piece of narrative. And yet it's a playable compendium of cyberpunk imageries. Which is great. Just like TW3 was a great compendium of dark medieval fantasy.