Even though my score might not reflect this, I have never felt as conflicted with a game as I did with Cyberpunk 2077. It’s no secret that Cyberpunk’s release was rough and even now after all the updates and patches it still has some of that roughness. But in between those rough edges lays a game I couldn’t put down and loved playing all the way through.

Cyberpunk’s strength lies without a doubt in its quests, both the mainline and side ones. They’re filled with amazing stories, well-written dialogue, and characters that you’re going to fall in love with no matter what. The gameplay that accompanies you through those quests is fun enough, nothing ground-breaking but it does its job. Shooting things felt good and while it took me some time to get used to the driving it also became fun after a while and I choose driving everywhere over using the fast travel system.

The game is marketed and pushed as an RPG, but it rarely feels like one. The skill tree doesn’t have any meaningful impact on your gameplay, or at least it didn’t feel like it had, and the same goes for the implants except for maybe the gorilla arms and double jump (seriously a double jump makes any game at least 95% better, that’s just facts). I think the game could’ve been a lot better if they merged the skill tree with the implants but did not have both at the same time. Make it so that the implants really change how your character plays and looks, make synergies between implants, let the player do an ‘implant-less’ run, etc. Go full Cyberpunk with those implants. Right now it feels like they have a lot of missed potential and that’s kind of disappointing. In general, Cyberpunk could use a lot more customization and variety. That goes for weapons, clothing, and cars, … Maybe that’s all too ambitious for the game, but isn’t that what they promised us?

But even with those lacking systems, some glitches, visual bugs, and my game crashing multiple times throughout my playthrough, I could not put the game down. I really enjoyed being in Night City and getting to know its inhabitants and learning their stories. From a cop looking for his nephew with one of the most disturbing endings ever to a rogue AI-cab-company-thing that needed your help. I loved going through all of them. A cool thing Cyberpunk does, and one I wished more games would do, is keeping you updated on those characters through text messages and phone calls. It made the relationships you built with those NPCs feel more important and real. I even completed all the gigs and NCPD missions and had a ton of fun doing them. There’s something within Cyberpunk that hits just right but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

I’m going to think about this game a bit more and my score might change over time, but I’ll settle on this right now. If I could, I would give this an 8.5 but since we're stuck with a 5-star rating system this will do for now. With all the problems I had with the game, it might seem high but it somehow feels right, don’t know if that makes sense. I really loved this game, ok?

TL:DR
Cyberpunk 2077 is a game with some high highs and low lows but for me, the highs had a lot more impact on my enjoyment.