I didn't really follow the hype cycle for Cyberpunk when it was coming out. I did watch the funny glitch compilations though. Now that it's been 3 years since launch I can definitely say that I've seen just about every glitch in my playthrough albeit at (I assume) a less frequent rate. It didn't exactly ruin the experience for me though since pretty much everything else about the game was great.
I will say based on what I've heard, the way stats worked at launch sounds absolutely rancid with it all being tied to gear. It's been changed to be tied to level up choices. I cannot imagine enjoying it nearly as much in the original state. It's not quite the depth of customization compared to some other open world RPGs like say Vampire the Masquerade but as is it's enough to feel like the build I created was my build and not something generic.
The gameplay is pretty fun overall. The gunplay feels nice and most of the skills felt useful. I do find the way healing items work to be a bit questionable since it feels borderline impossible to run out. Most of the challenge (on hard mode at least) was just making sure you back off and heal when you're getting overwhelmed. I kinda see where some people are coming from on the cars feeling "bad" to drive. For me it's in this weird inbetween where it feels very sim racer but without a lot of depth like gear switching. I'd still take this over it being super smooth and arcade-y since it makes driving around town way more interesting to me compared to say GTA.
As for the role playing elements, I think this is something where it feels a little lacking. I feel like this is one of the draw backs to having a voiced protag since there's going to inherently be more railroading on choices. In most scenarios your choices are going to be whether or not you want to ask more questions to expand world building or just things to make you consider the theming of the game. The choices that matter are very specific major questlines and your ending choices. Besides that, you're essentially just playing the Project Red's Cyberpunk character, V, instead of your fun OC.
Anyways, liking Cyberpunk as much as I did was a nice surprise. I can honestly see myself returning to it when the DLC/Expansion drops in a couple of months.

Oh, and thank you CDPR for making (almost) all the walking and talking cinematics skippable. Every studio now has no excuse not to do this if they want their games to actually be fun to replay.

World Tour was surprisingly better than I imagined... I mean, I still got bored with it after a few hours but hey, better than I expected. I mostly just think it'd be a lot better if it were shorter. I currently still haven't completed it and my only real motivation to continue it is unlocking costumes. On that note, I can probably complain about how grindy it is to unlock the classic costumes be I'll be real here and say this is by design since they wanna tempt you to just fork over cash to unlock it (along with additional colors for the standard costumes.) I also, just plain dislike how bare bones Arcade mode feels. It's still in that sf5 style where you do a few matches and then a picture book cutscene plays. IDK why Capcom is insisting the plain old 7 stages then you fight an overpowered bad guy is old hat. Most times that's really all I want from single player content in a fighting game. I'm holding out hope this will get added in at some point.
As for the actual reason to play a fighting game, I think the game feels great. The drive bar makes for a really engaging mechanic, full of risk reward. There's a lot of great training room options to help you understand the game better. The modern mode controls seem like a really neat addition too. Not just for Street Fighter noobs but it seems to work really well in ranked play based on some of the fights I've had. Speaking of the online play feels really good which is such a breath of fresh air after SF5 being pretty unplayable with someone not in the same room as you.
Oh I know a lot of people disagree, but I think the music is good. Not the greatest thing out there when it comes to the genre but I like it. I get where some people are coming from where some of the themes don't completely fit the characters. I just think some minor adjustments should've been made. For example, I think Genbu Temple should've been Ryu's theme. I suppose you can view it as interchangeable since that is his stage though. Also, something I don't think a lot of people are appreciating is how the music fades out and back into a different section of the track between rounds. Enjoyers of the Guilty Gear Strive OST might see why this would be nice since there are a number of tracks that barely make it past their opening section before the match ends.

I'm going to admit I had absolutely zero expectations about the story mode. At best it was going to be a pivot into a worse version of Destiny. Something I think only barely worked in favor of a game made from the ground up to be as opposed to a purely pvp game being molded into. So, on some level I do understand them wanting to drop the focus on what the game was actually made to be... but not after advertising Overwatch "2" as a product with PvE story coming down the line and also pre-orders for said content... then you charge for the scaled back story content for extra salt in the wounds.
I'm not going to lie to you here though, I'll still be playing. If only because I already have a squad of friends I play with. Would I recommend it to new players though? Hell no! The amount you would have to pay just to get a decent amount of skins, emotes, voice lines, etc (which do effect my enjoyment playing a character) is ridiculous. On that note, I don't really think loot boxes were that bad unless you have a gatcha gambling addiction. I found it really easy just to log on 5-10 hours a week and get a decent collection of stuff without throwing additional money into the machine. Now I feel like you gotta work double the amount just to unlock whatever new character is in the free tier of the battle pass... in a game counter character picking (remember when the new characters were free for exactly this reason??)
...Oh, and there's a large swath of allegations within Activision I'm sure you're all aware of and don't need me to help determine where you stand on and how you choose to support them financially.

Not really sure what the point of the new campaign is since it's this weird detour in the main campaign where you're forced to play as 4 characters with incredibly lame start out decks with zero progression. I've done it a couple of times at this point and I can tell you once I unlock all the costumes you get from it, I'm never touching it again. Going off the Dev's steam posts, it seems this was important to them from a narrative prospective, but as I mention in my review of the main game, I barely consider this game as having a story.
The new character you unlock, Yogger, is incredibly broken. If you're going aura charging build then he's going to turn every conflict into a joke by end game. That being said, using a broken character can be a lot of fun.
Honestly, I kinda just hope they won't do any more DLC for this game. I'd rather they just take what they learned here on this project to make a sequel/spiritual sequel with better presentation. Basically I want the 30XX to this game's 20XX>

Not too sure when the best point to label a rogue like beaten since they're nearly infinite playtime in theory. I have however won around 7-ish times at this point both solo and co-op and my addiction to it doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon.
The story feels straight out of the NES which is to say there isn't much of story. The visuals aren't exactly amazing either and look more fitting for a phone/browser game. Once you get past that there's a lot of fun ways to experiment with card and character comp to make big numbers get bigger. There's a suggested placement of what character classes should go where in your party but you can ultimately do whatever you want. In my last run, I actually ran a party that was 2 healers and 2 rogues. Not only was it optimal, it ended up being a little on the busted side even with the difficulty modifiers.

The DLC only lasts about an hour so the two new characters never really get off the ground in terms of characterization and kinda just makes me wish they would've just let some of the characters from origins/awakenings come back instead. All combat and exploration more so feel like they're just they as a formality of the genre. I especially love when one of the characters go "it's that legendary monster" right before fighting it, like that was all the set up required to make it interesting.
I could maybe see how the story might've felt neat if I played it back when it came out but as someone who was kinda hoping for some closure on [insert spoiler for plot choice in Origins] that I know doesn't get resolved in the following 2 games, it all feels pretty pointless. Like, I get wanting to see some tangible continuation on player choices in sequel projects is a big ask. It's the main reason they don't give you returning comrades in DLC. It still makes me feel like doing direct sequels to games with character choices don't really work. Or rather at least ones with the amount of choices DAO had.

This game would be such an easy 10 out of 10 if it weren't so held together by ducktape. Also, the combat admittedly isn't exactly great and can be a little bit very on the frustrating side at certain points. All of it 100% worth it to hang out in this mid 2000s goth world with all its fun characters set to what's quickly becoming one of my all time favorite video game soundtracks. This was my 1st playthrough and I already have a sense for how different this game will be when I inevitably come back and replay with a different class.

Fun game with fun mechanics and fun characters. The story won't knock your socks off but I think it nails the emotional beats when it needs to. It also can't be understated how well this Japanese studio nailed the mid 2000s American made anime inspired action cartoon look. BTW don't let the tone of the game fool you. The game can be fairly challenging at parts. I got skill checked a good few times throughout my run of the story on Hard mode. I will mentioned you don't need to be a rhythm game expert to play either. I was scoring B at the best of times and Cs most of the time in that department.
I do think there are a couple of things holding it back. Mostly in the post game. For one the enemy arrangements don't really seem to be effected by difficulty changes like in Bayonetta or DMC. Also, while the big cinematic cutscenes are skippable, there's a lot of small cutscenes that aren't skippable which can get grating when your just trying to play the video game.

For this playthrough, I played it with the widescreen patch. Since more enemies and obstacles were on the screen at once, it made some of the timing different. Some levels it made trivially easy, a few became brutally difficult, and most were just about the same. All and all I kinda just consider playing with this patch a pretty freakin' neat alternative take rather than a new definitive way to play SMW from this point forward.
Other than that what do you want me to say? It's the hood classic, Super Mario World.

It might be kinda strange but while I've beaten DAO 5 or 6 times, this is my 1st time completing Awakening.
Now that I've finally finished it, I liked it quite a bit. The story being about sentient Darkspawn appearing felt a bit like a shark jump at first but now that I've seen it through, it won me over. If I had a major complaint when comparing it to the main game is it feels a bit too much like an inbetween of a sequel and a dlc in terms of how it's paced. I think I'd have preferred this to be a full blown sequel. I can also mention that while the higher level cap and new skills were cool, it doesn't really feel like the game was balanced around them.

"What the Blight doesn't destroy, politics surely will."
I might be in the minority who doesn't consider the combat style in DAO to be primitive. The learning curve is a little steep and I'd probably recommend playing on one of the easier difficulties if it's your first time playing something like this but I think it's worth it for all the fun risk/reward it provides.
I will say some of the quests run on a bit long and I can think of at least one quest I'd remove entirely cough the Tower fade quest cough. Most of them are very great with a lot of intriguing moral and political choices to navigate. The cast is great and they all bounce off each other incredibly well. It's always a treat seeing how each will react to different choices on new playthroughs.
If there's one thing that really does suck about the game is the lack of support this game gets from EA. I definitely think it needs a remaster way more than Mass Effect ever did. I'd also argue that while most of the key characters looked good at launch, most of the npcs looked pretty rough The sheer amount of mods I have running on this game to make it look good on modern monitors would make most players heads spin. Don't get me wrong, it's not like Jade Empire, where it's totally unplayable without fixes but it's not exactly the best impression if you just play vanilla. We'll probably get a remaster someday. I just hope they don't sand all the edges down in the process though.
Anyways, DAO is an amazing game I've played way too many times and I can't wait to play many more times.

It's Control with some Alan Wake thrown in. I kinda don't think the two style's congealed well though.
Every time you get in low health and all the danger red is on the screen on top of the darkness, it made a combo where I couldn't see anything. The using tk to carry flashlights was neat but it never really felt like it mechanically went far enough. I also almost regret saying the stronger/spongier bosses of the main campaign were lame because I REALLY didn't like the final boss of this DLC. There was definitely an attempt at intriguing boss design though. The tells for his attacks could've been clearer imo.

I definitely enjoyed playing more of Control with Jessie's full move set. As cool as the game is at the beginning when your weak and very intimidated by everything around you, playing as Jessie the superhero girl boss director of the shady three letter organization is even more fun. If this game gets a sequel, then I really hope it's not gonna be a metriod thing where she loses all her skills at the beginning.
On the negative end of things, as the game's difficulty ramps up past the difficulty of the main game, the gun increasingly becomes an irrelevant part of your moveset. You think they would've added some more ways to increase gun damage further. My patience with the looting system is at an all time low too. 80% of the pick ups are going to be useless for your build and just feels like busy work. The new abilities were fun though even if they're only useable in the dlc area. Speaking of the dlc area, game I'm not going to drop what I'm doing to take care of an alert mission. I really wish there was a way to turn those off. They become more and more of an immersion breaker the more you play the game.