First things first, I played the game post-2.0 update.
I remember when this game was first announced and everyone went completely nuts over it. Then I also remember the continuous delays that more or less caused me to lose interest. Then the game was finally released and it was buggy and janked to hell, which was kinda the nail in the coffin for my interest. However, CDPR did the impossible and resurrected their dead game, pulling it back from the brink and ending up with something that is really damn impressive.
There is no denying that Cyberpunk 2077 is a great game, from a game design perspective. The world, the stories, the voice acting, and the gameplay all are incredibly well done. Really feels like you're playing one of the great cyberpunk/future dystopia sci-fi films.
I only have a few complaints. First, I was playing the game on Hard and I chose to go the quickhack route. This isn't to say that I was a glass cannon, per se, I very rarely died during normal combat encounters, usually even feeling overpowered. But there were 3 bosses that I had to turn the difficulty down for. One because their HP regen was literally faster than my reloading, and the other two because they'd kill me in one to two hits without hardly any chance for me to even react. Needs better balance in some places.
The second thing that annoyed me was how much time is spent talking. It's not a real problem during the course of the gameplay because it's fairly spread out in between missions, but as the game wraps up you start spending way too long in conversations. It took me two whole evenings of play time to finish the last mission because of how much dialogue there was, even with me reading the subtitles and skipping ahead. Even so, I enjoyed the story, I just wish the pacing were better in some places.
Also, related, "Relic Malfunction Detected" always resulted in an eye roll from me like "oh good here we go, V's got to collapse for a sec and waste my time."
Finally, I don't need a happy ending ever time, but I just really didn't like any of the choices in the end. Everything was left too ambiguous as to how things would turn out. I know that is how life is and that there are always unknowns but from a gameplay perspective it just ends up feeling bad. The difference being that in life, you can ask more questions, do more research, explore other options. In a game you have only the set number of paths ahead of you and you have no agency to learn more than the game allows you to. Therefore, even if the depressing endings are "realistic" in their layered end-states, they just left me feeling dissatisfied with the choices that I was forced to make.
Overall I did like the game, but it didn't blow me away and I won't be going back to it. I appreciate the work that went into it, I appreciate that CDPR stuck with it and fixed their embarrassment of a release instead of just cutting their losses. Kudos to the devs. I'll definitely want to try the sequel.
I remember when this game was first announced and everyone went completely nuts over it. Then I also remember the continuous delays that more or less caused me to lose interest. Then the game was finally released and it was buggy and janked to hell, which was kinda the nail in the coffin for my interest. However, CDPR did the impossible and resurrected their dead game, pulling it back from the brink and ending up with something that is really damn impressive.
There is no denying that Cyberpunk 2077 is a great game, from a game design perspective. The world, the stories, the voice acting, and the gameplay all are incredibly well done. Really feels like you're playing one of the great cyberpunk/future dystopia sci-fi films.
I only have a few complaints. First, I was playing the game on Hard and I chose to go the quickhack route. This isn't to say that I was a glass cannon, per se, I very rarely died during normal combat encounters, usually even feeling overpowered. But there were 3 bosses that I had to turn the difficulty down for. One because their HP regen was literally faster than my reloading, and the other two because they'd kill me in one to two hits without hardly any chance for me to even react. Needs better balance in some places.
The second thing that annoyed me was how much time is spent talking. It's not a real problem during the course of the gameplay because it's fairly spread out in between missions, but as the game wraps up you start spending way too long in conversations. It took me two whole evenings of play time to finish the last mission because of how much dialogue there was, even with me reading the subtitles and skipping ahead. Even so, I enjoyed the story, I just wish the pacing were better in some places.
Also, related, "Relic Malfunction Detected" always resulted in an eye roll from me like "oh good here we go, V's got to collapse for a sec and waste my time."
Finally, I don't need a happy ending ever time, but I just really didn't like any of the choices in the end. Everything was left too ambiguous as to how things would turn out. I know that is how life is and that there are always unknowns but from a gameplay perspective it just ends up feeling bad. The difference being that in life, you can ask more questions, do more research, explore other options. In a game you have only the set number of paths ahead of you and you have no agency to learn more than the game allows you to. Therefore, even if the depressing endings are "realistic" in their layered end-states, they just left me feeling dissatisfied with the choices that I was forced to make.
Overall I did like the game, but it didn't blow me away and I won't be going back to it. I appreciate the work that went into it, I appreciate that CDPR stuck with it and fixed their embarrassment of a release instead of just cutting their losses. Kudos to the devs. I'll definitely want to try the sequel.