Cyberpunk 2077 has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. Typically, I’m not someone that gets all that excited for western AAA releases, but this game was an exception. I have a huge taste for the cyberpunk genre as well as futuristic settings in general, and at the time of the game’s launch, the idea of a massive open world RPG within that genre and setting was immensely enticing to me. Then the game dropped with one of the most infamous video game launches of all time. It was absolutely littered with all types of bugs that ranged from hilarious to gamebreaking. Consoles were struggling to run it, and last-gen ones were getting completely bricked attempting to do so. Stories of how poorly development was managed and the horrible crunch the people working on it were put under were coming out months after release. CDPR eventually even got hacked and were threatened to pay a ransom or risk the source code of the game being leaked. To say that it was an absolute shitshow would be an understatement.
Yet despite ALL of that, weirdly enough, I was still able to enjoy my first playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 quite a bit. Now to be fair, I played the PC version of the game on a rig that had been recently built. While I did run into numerous bugs and performance issues in specific areas, including numerous quests being completely broken and uncompletable, I didn’t have it nearly as bad as most console players did. It was a lot easier for me to see CDPR’s vision and enjoy the game in its mangled state, even if it didn’t turn out how it was supposed to. After the game’s horrific launch, the folks at CDPR promised that they were going to fix all of the issues with it and make it closer to their original intentions for the game, as well as supplement it with additional downloadable content. After my original playthrough, I decided that I wanted to wait a few years and come back to it once CDPR pledged to fix it, and after three years, with the launch of the 2.0 update and the Phantom Liberty expansion, I decided this was the time to give the game another go.
While there have been AAA developers in the past that have promised to fix a game after a troubled and bug-ridden launch, I struggle to think of any examples aside from maybe No Man’s Sky where a developer makes such a long term commitment to refining their game the way CDPR has with Cyberpunk 2077. They’ve shipped out numerous updates over the course of these past three years, stamping out a countless number of bugs and actually making the game playable for certain people. I do think that they were able to mostly deliver on their promise to fix the game. The old bugs and performance problems that I ran into during my first playthrough are completely gone, and the game now runs incredibly smoothly for the most part. I did still run into some bugs, but they tended to just be minor presentation ones, such as NPCs occasionally clipping through objects or floating in midair, and infrequently overlapping audio during conversations. I did run into a confusing issue with the Phantom Liberty expansion, but I’ll talk about that in my review for it.
Aside from the technical issues, a lot of the controversy surrounding the game was that to many, it turned out to not be the choice driven RPG that it was frequently marketed as, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. 2077 requires you to explore and engage with its world in order to receive opportunities to make choices that affect how the story plays out. What you could consider to be the main storyline (specifically everything that has to do with Takemura and the Arasaka family, which is required to get the point of no return) is actually rather short, railroaded, and won’t take too long to complete. At the very least, you need to complete 2077’s major side plots in order to get the most out of its narrative and the game as a whole. This will involve completing a specific series of side quests that involve certain characters or factions. There are multiple endings to choose from, but you’ll only unlock them if you’ve completed those major side plots. Otherwise, you’ll only have one single option to choose as an ending. If you only stick to the main storyline, you will miss out on not just the choices that will shape how the story concludes, but you’ll also miss out on so, so, so much excellent story, worldbuilding, and content in general. Just following the primary campaign won’t get you the most out of this game, and doing so will only result in a major disservice for yourself.
That being said though, some decisions definitely affect the game more than others. The life paths that you choose at the beginning of the game have always been one of the most disappointing aspects for me. These are essentially the origins and backgrounds of your character. The only thing that your life paths really affect is how the very beginning of the story plays out, as well as very minor dialogue options in numerous conversations. The game places a lot of importance on your choice of life path, but in all honesty, it’s not nearly as important of a choice as the game makes it out to be. It’s disappointing because I feel like there was a lot of potential for your choice of life path to affect the narrative and gameplay. Overall though, I do think this is more of a minor issue that I’d still like to see addressed in 2077’s sequel.
For me, the primary appeal of Cyberpunk 2077 is how Night City is filled to the brim with all sorts of stories that you can discover or stumble into and take part in. Getting hit by an autonomous taxi that leads to the start of the Delamain side quest, randomly bumping into the guy with the malfunctioning crotch implant who begs you to take him to a doctor, or stopping to meditate with a buddhist priest you just happen to come across on the street that mysteriously vanishes after you sit with him. There’s so many fascinating people to meet and so many different stories that you can take part in and shape all throughout Night City. You also make choices during these side quests which will shape how they turn out, such as the conclusion to the Delamain quest or the crucifixion quest with Joshua Stephenson. The quests in 2077 are all very well-written, I struggle to think of a single quest that I didn’t enjoy in some way.
Night City isn’t just a massive and pretty looking futuristic city, it’s filled with a lot of NPCs who behave in a way that really makes the city feel alive. You can find drug deals going wrong and leading to a shootout, someone consoling their friend over a breakup, people suffering from nasty hangovers, and people simply ordering food at a restaurant or making small talk at a club. These NPC interactions that you can encounter are all voice acted, and they all feel extremely natural as well, though there are some reused animations here and there that may break the immersion. This in addition to all of the stories throughout the game are what make Night City my favorite world I’ve explored in any game I’ve ever played. I love just driving my bike around the city and seeing what kind of trouble I can get mixed up in.
Aside from the narrative, roleplaying also extends to stealth, combat and interacting with the environment. You have a number of attributes and perks that you can acquire as you level up that define your approach to combat and allow you to open up additional or easier paths in certain areas in order to complete objectives. The perks you choose will shape your overall playstyle, and it’s very fluid. I’ve played through the game twice now, and while I can’t comment on every single option that the game gives to you, I can say that I had a really good time with both of my builds. I wanted my first character to essentially be built like Doomguy, so I focused on upgrading my strength via the Body attribute and choosing perks related to shotguns and explosives, which in turn limited my ability to approach things in a stealthy manner. For my most recent playthrough, I wanted to roleplay as a samurai, so I focused on upgrading the Reflexes attribute and choosing perks that affected my efficiency with blades as well as enhancing my movement with things like a dash ability and a double jump. This allowed me to dash all over the place and shred foes into ribbons like I was Vergil from Devil May Cry. You have quite frankly, an overwhelming number of options in terms of building your character, which I think is fantastic. I didn’t even touch upon the Netrunning stuff that you can do, mainly because I didn’t really choose to invest in Netrunning skills, but I still think that being able to use the environment as your plaything by hacking things like lights and vending machines to distract enemies, or even just straight up hacking enemies themselves is extremely cool.
The FPS combat in 2077 isn’t the best that I’ve ever played, but I do think that it’s still very enjoyable and satisfying for what it is. I’m not a gun snob, so to me, they felt pretty good to use. Though, since I was a samurai for this playthrough, I mainly used katanas, which were pretty decent. I do wish that the enemies reacted a bit more when they’re hit by your sword, but I still had a lot of fun slicing and dicing dudes up, and especially deflecting their bullets back at them, which can cause critical damage if you manage to do so at the correct time. There’s also the cyberware that you can install on your character that can grant you unique abilities. Admittedly, I didn’t mess around with the cyberware too much, but I did make a point of acquiring a Sandevistan, the cyberware that was featured in the Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime that allows you to slow time. This cyberware can be a little OP, especially if you combine it with other cyberware that immediately lets you use it again after the time limit on it expires. I was able to use it in difficult situations to get to cover and heal up, as well as use it for stealth in order to just zoom past foes without being seen. You lose the ability to hack things at all as a trade-off for the Sandevistan, which in all honesty, is very fair.
Cyberpunk 2077 will probably always live in the shadow of its disastrous launch, and I think that’s probably for the best. I love this game, I really do. My second playthrough has solidified it as one of my favorites of all time, and I have thoroughly enjoyed both of my 80+ hour long playthroughs of it. But to tell you the truth, I don’t think that its launch should be forgotten. As much as I love the game, even my original playthrough of it, I don’t want to perpetuate the revisionist idea that it was always good. I think that CDPR should be commended for their commitment to fixing the game, but I also don’t think that they necessarily should be rewarded for doing so. The game was given an award for “Best Ongoing Game” at the 2023 Game Awards, which felt kind of disingenuous. I wouldn’t say that spending the past three years fixing a game means that the game itself is “ongoing”. No game should launch in the state that Cyberpunk 2077 did. There’s already a precedent amongst AAA publishers that it’s okay for games to launch in terrible states so long as it's fixed later down the line, and I worry that 2077’s redemption arc gives companies the idea that rushing launches and then fixing the game later is always a viable option, even if it takes two or three years to make it playable. I hope that everyone at CDPR has learned from their experiences with Cyberpunk 2077, because I really want them to continue to build upon the foundation that they’ve laid down and take the IP to even greater heights in the future. I want to return to a Night City even farther in the future, see how it's changed, meet all sorts of new people and get wrapped up in even grander stories of friendship, love, loss and corporate greed.
Yet despite ALL of that, weirdly enough, I was still able to enjoy my first playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 quite a bit. Now to be fair, I played the PC version of the game on a rig that had been recently built. While I did run into numerous bugs and performance issues in specific areas, including numerous quests being completely broken and uncompletable, I didn’t have it nearly as bad as most console players did. It was a lot easier for me to see CDPR’s vision and enjoy the game in its mangled state, even if it didn’t turn out how it was supposed to. After the game’s horrific launch, the folks at CDPR promised that they were going to fix all of the issues with it and make it closer to their original intentions for the game, as well as supplement it with additional downloadable content. After my original playthrough, I decided that I wanted to wait a few years and come back to it once CDPR pledged to fix it, and after three years, with the launch of the 2.0 update and the Phantom Liberty expansion, I decided this was the time to give the game another go.
While there have been AAA developers in the past that have promised to fix a game after a troubled and bug-ridden launch, I struggle to think of any examples aside from maybe No Man’s Sky where a developer makes such a long term commitment to refining their game the way CDPR has with Cyberpunk 2077. They’ve shipped out numerous updates over the course of these past three years, stamping out a countless number of bugs and actually making the game playable for certain people. I do think that they were able to mostly deliver on their promise to fix the game. The old bugs and performance problems that I ran into during my first playthrough are completely gone, and the game now runs incredibly smoothly for the most part. I did still run into some bugs, but they tended to just be minor presentation ones, such as NPCs occasionally clipping through objects or floating in midair, and infrequently overlapping audio during conversations. I did run into a confusing issue with the Phantom Liberty expansion, but I’ll talk about that in my review for it.
Aside from the technical issues, a lot of the controversy surrounding the game was that to many, it turned out to not be the choice driven RPG that it was frequently marketed as, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true. 2077 requires you to explore and engage with its world in order to receive opportunities to make choices that affect how the story plays out. What you could consider to be the main storyline (specifically everything that has to do with Takemura and the Arasaka family, which is required to get the point of no return) is actually rather short, railroaded, and won’t take too long to complete. At the very least, you need to complete 2077’s major side plots in order to get the most out of its narrative and the game as a whole. This will involve completing a specific series of side quests that involve certain characters or factions. There are multiple endings to choose from, but you’ll only unlock them if you’ve completed those major side plots. Otherwise, you’ll only have one single option to choose as an ending. If you only stick to the main storyline, you will miss out on not just the choices that will shape how the story concludes, but you’ll also miss out on so, so, so much excellent story, worldbuilding, and content in general. Just following the primary campaign won’t get you the most out of this game, and doing so will only result in a major disservice for yourself.
That being said though, some decisions definitely affect the game more than others. The life paths that you choose at the beginning of the game have always been one of the most disappointing aspects for me. These are essentially the origins and backgrounds of your character. The only thing that your life paths really affect is how the very beginning of the story plays out, as well as very minor dialogue options in numerous conversations. The game places a lot of importance on your choice of life path, but in all honesty, it’s not nearly as important of a choice as the game makes it out to be. It’s disappointing because I feel like there was a lot of potential for your choice of life path to affect the narrative and gameplay. Overall though, I do think this is more of a minor issue that I’d still like to see addressed in 2077’s sequel.
For me, the primary appeal of Cyberpunk 2077 is how Night City is filled to the brim with all sorts of stories that you can discover or stumble into and take part in. Getting hit by an autonomous taxi that leads to the start of the Delamain side quest, randomly bumping into the guy with the malfunctioning crotch implant who begs you to take him to a doctor, or stopping to meditate with a buddhist priest you just happen to come across on the street that mysteriously vanishes after you sit with him. There’s so many fascinating people to meet and so many different stories that you can take part in and shape all throughout Night City. You also make choices during these side quests which will shape how they turn out, such as the conclusion to the Delamain quest or the crucifixion quest with Joshua Stephenson. The quests in 2077 are all very well-written, I struggle to think of a single quest that I didn’t enjoy in some way.
Night City isn’t just a massive and pretty looking futuristic city, it’s filled with a lot of NPCs who behave in a way that really makes the city feel alive. You can find drug deals going wrong and leading to a shootout, someone consoling their friend over a breakup, people suffering from nasty hangovers, and people simply ordering food at a restaurant or making small talk at a club. These NPC interactions that you can encounter are all voice acted, and they all feel extremely natural as well, though there are some reused animations here and there that may break the immersion. This in addition to all of the stories throughout the game are what make Night City my favorite world I’ve explored in any game I’ve ever played. I love just driving my bike around the city and seeing what kind of trouble I can get mixed up in.
Aside from the narrative, roleplaying also extends to stealth, combat and interacting with the environment. You have a number of attributes and perks that you can acquire as you level up that define your approach to combat and allow you to open up additional or easier paths in certain areas in order to complete objectives. The perks you choose will shape your overall playstyle, and it’s very fluid. I’ve played through the game twice now, and while I can’t comment on every single option that the game gives to you, I can say that I had a really good time with both of my builds. I wanted my first character to essentially be built like Doomguy, so I focused on upgrading my strength via the Body attribute and choosing perks related to shotguns and explosives, which in turn limited my ability to approach things in a stealthy manner. For my most recent playthrough, I wanted to roleplay as a samurai, so I focused on upgrading the Reflexes attribute and choosing perks that affected my efficiency with blades as well as enhancing my movement with things like a dash ability and a double jump. This allowed me to dash all over the place and shred foes into ribbons like I was Vergil from Devil May Cry. You have quite frankly, an overwhelming number of options in terms of building your character, which I think is fantastic. I didn’t even touch upon the Netrunning stuff that you can do, mainly because I didn’t really choose to invest in Netrunning skills, but I still think that being able to use the environment as your plaything by hacking things like lights and vending machines to distract enemies, or even just straight up hacking enemies themselves is extremely cool.
The FPS combat in 2077 isn’t the best that I’ve ever played, but I do think that it’s still very enjoyable and satisfying for what it is. I’m not a gun snob, so to me, they felt pretty good to use. Though, since I was a samurai for this playthrough, I mainly used katanas, which were pretty decent. I do wish that the enemies reacted a bit more when they’re hit by your sword, but I still had a lot of fun slicing and dicing dudes up, and especially deflecting their bullets back at them, which can cause critical damage if you manage to do so at the correct time. There’s also the cyberware that you can install on your character that can grant you unique abilities. Admittedly, I didn’t mess around with the cyberware too much, but I did make a point of acquiring a Sandevistan, the cyberware that was featured in the Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime that allows you to slow time. This cyberware can be a little OP, especially if you combine it with other cyberware that immediately lets you use it again after the time limit on it expires. I was able to use it in difficult situations to get to cover and heal up, as well as use it for stealth in order to just zoom past foes without being seen. You lose the ability to hack things at all as a trade-off for the Sandevistan, which in all honesty, is very fair.
Cyberpunk 2077 will probably always live in the shadow of its disastrous launch, and I think that’s probably for the best. I love this game, I really do. My second playthrough has solidified it as one of my favorites of all time, and I have thoroughly enjoyed both of my 80+ hour long playthroughs of it. But to tell you the truth, I don’t think that its launch should be forgotten. As much as I love the game, even my original playthrough of it, I don’t want to perpetuate the revisionist idea that it was always good. I think that CDPR should be commended for their commitment to fixing the game, but I also don’t think that they necessarily should be rewarded for doing so. The game was given an award for “Best Ongoing Game” at the 2023 Game Awards, which felt kind of disingenuous. I wouldn’t say that spending the past three years fixing a game means that the game itself is “ongoing”. No game should launch in the state that Cyberpunk 2077 did. There’s already a precedent amongst AAA publishers that it’s okay for games to launch in terrible states so long as it's fixed later down the line, and I worry that 2077’s redemption arc gives companies the idea that rushing launches and then fixing the game later is always a viable option, even if it takes two or three years to make it playable. I hope that everyone at CDPR has learned from their experiences with Cyberpunk 2077, because I really want them to continue to build upon the foundation that they’ve laid down and take the IP to even greater heights in the future. I want to return to a Night City even farther in the future, see how it's changed, meet all sorts of new people and get wrapped up in even grander stories of friendship, love, loss and corporate greed.