I feel like I'm watching something die while playing this, there's something uncannily disturbing and also pathetic to it. 2077 is an aesthetically visionless game, a collage of 2012 cyberpunk wallpapers, complete w the thoroughly unexamined orientalism. Mechanically your options are the standard collection of Ubisoft open worldisms, pick up guns that are magically bigger number than the same gun you had an hour ago, pick up a collectable, talk to a guy to go to a base where you can either do shallow stealth or shitty shooting, and sometimes you might get to pick a dialogue option! Plus like every modern AAA game loads and loads of trivial terrible unskippable dialogue. Gave up after the third crash in 12 hours, lmao fuck this game. Remember when they put flashing lights in it that could kill people?

I'm somewhat conflicted on this game, because I really liked it but underneath it all I still know it's a mess that can't be fixed.

Let's get some things out of the way first. There are still critical errors all around this game, it feels very unstable. I haven't had a single crash in my playthrough, either softlock or a hardlock. But I did run into some nasty graphical errors, the screen in particular which couldn't stop flickering every time I moved the camera with garbage graphics. The rest were minor but did broke my inmersion. Like a guy doing a T-Pose in the middle of the street or that I could'nt stealth properly because they mapped the same button for crouching and skipping dialogue, that was made on purpose.

I had a fun time all things considered. Personally I just love games that give the freedom to play the way you want and tackle problems the way you see fit and more fun for youself.

Really liked the story, but they could've done so much more with the setting. Not much different from a modern open world game with a futuristic coat of paint in top of it. The characters were charming and very realised, specially Johnny even if Keannu performance wasn't the best. Wished V could've a character we made along the way instead of being a stablished one which ended up being a cocky dude.

The world and the universe feels realised but empty by the end. They could've done so much with it. The city is nothing more than a façade, a pretty looking one at that. Empty buildings, only a few interiors, you can barely talk to people. I don't know, it comes as it was unfinished.

This game needed to be much better, but ambition got the best of it. Not to mention the countless bugs that are still on the game after all these years. Looking forward to the DLC because I want this game to be good, but it falls short on so many places.

I am, I am in shock, right now I am not well, I am freaking out, I have never had such a long and beautiful journey as with Cyberpunk 2077. This has been the best thing to close the year. It's too beautiful that I can't explain it in words.
I started this game, 14 days ago, 2 whole weeks playing it, no other game, just Cyberpunk. Em embark on the journey with the male 'V', doing identical to the 'V' from the trailers and the cover, having a little idea of the game, just simple photos that I had seen, without any spoilers, nor did I know what I was going to game, I had not seen trailers, or absolutely anything. An unknown journey. From the first day I loved it, many people used to talk about the bugs, but now this game is incredible, I haven't had a single bug in 40 hours of playing, only slow map loading, textures, lower FPS in very concentrated places with a lot of shots and that's it, but that's from playing it on PS4, so I don't care, it didn't bother me either, because it barely happened.
V a totally charismatic protagonist, with great aspirations who wants to be great, a legend in Night City with his friend Jackie, but Jackie... ends up dying (rest in peace Jackie...) and V a while later, also. He is resurrected thanks to the relic, where the "mind" of Johnny Silverhand was, the charismatic, selfish, open-minded, and somewhat crazy asshole, he doesn't give a shit about everything.

And this is when V's true journey begins.
This game is amazing, it's... Perfect in its own way.
The mission style is not repetitive, you have dozens of options to complete any mission, stealth, hacking, being aggressive and more.
Quite frenetic and incredible gameplay, good controls, good skill system, good weapons and something totally beautiful and that is modifying your body with chrome. It is impossible to get bored playing.
Dozens of secondary missions which are part of the story, secondary missions that are not in vain, that have a great contribution to the story and its different endings, each one different from the other, each one with a different plot, with something different , nothing repetitive, nor monotonous, everything perfectly balanced. The best secondary missions I have seen. Apart from the orders and etc, which are incredible too.
The open world is exquisite, you can do countless things, explore, kill, steal, shop or just eat something. A great map, but not too great, just enough to not be tedious. Fast travel and cars/motorcycles are very good, the driving in this game is quite good, although the physics are a bit strange.
Also the scanner is great, I mean, the gameplay is perfect, it's beautiful, it's extremely incredible in all its fullness.
The radio is quite good, it has variety to pass the time going from one place to another, you don't need to put on music yourself.
The calling and messaging system is incredible, I love it and it is very interesting. It makes you appreciate each of the characters more.

Let's talk about the side Cast, it is one of the best I have seen in gaming, all the characters full of life, with very good performances, each one with their conflicts, aspirations, personality and charisma, each of them are unique and incredible. It's like you're his real friends.

V's journey... It is too emotional, every time you advance and spend more time with him, the more connection you have with him, the more comfortable you are, the more you like him, the more you connect with him. V... He could be a real person, he is a very human and realistic character, whether it be his conflicts, charisma, attitudes, actions, etc., it doesn't matter, V is perfect in that sense, too human for me. V's development is especially beautiful, someone who aspired to everything greater, wants to be remembered, admired, to be a legend, someone who just... Wants to live and be happy with his people (at least in my game). And then Johnny, an incredible deuteragonist, an arrogant man, who wants to live again, he doesn't care about V, then be a friend of V, someone who accepts his death, accepts the evil he has done, thanks to V, Johnny achieves his redemption, realizes everything and even in the last moments does not try to claim V's body, he simply wants V to be happy, follow his path, and he will go where he belongs.


I would love to talk about the love relationships in this game and that's what I'm going to do. If Cyberpunk 2077 has something special, it is this. Something that is too original and full of life, where every act counts, where every decision and word you say counts, and not just in relationships, in the entire game.
When I played Judy's act, she is a truly charming character, when she finished her act, I even missed her for V. As you already know, with male V nothing can be done with Judy.
But everything changes when Panam Palmer arrives, she had heard that she was better than Judy, something I highly doubted, but in the end... Oh man, I have really ended up falling in love with Panam, a nomad who her help for a job and then the other way around, a beautiful trip with her, the choices and dialogues are very natural, and you are the one who gets Panam. A girl on the outside who is tough and with a lot of charisma, but on the inside, deep down she is sweet, loving, sentimental, someone who needs to be protected, someone who needs V, a totally beautiful girl inside and out, a girl with many internal conflicts, and the beautiful thing about this is that we can help her with all her problems, make her feel better and make her do the same for us. The sentimental moments between the two of them are special, they are unique. And there is a very beautiful moment, a memory of V's past that Panam remembers, next to the bonfire, looking at the stars, Panam says alone "for Jackie", that simple moment is incredible, brother, how could I not love to this girl?
I don't give a shit about all the other relationships, Panam is something special, which interweaves a very realistic and personal bond with V and the player, which doesn't happen with the other relationships. Panam is different. I want a Panam in my fucking life, universe, PLEASE. I felt like she almost loved me, something too personal (I definitely fell in love with a pixel).


Leaving those things aside, now to the serious stuff.
Cyberpunk faces complex themes, about morality, duty, responsibility, or simply the purpose of life, existentialism, why we are here, or absurdism, ikigai, Utilitarianism, redemption, self-denial, freedom complex and hundreds more, maybe everything, maybe nothing. Cyberpunk does not have a very complex story, nor does it try to be very deep, it is simple, but good and very well executed, the important thing is the journey.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a test. To see if players are going to enjoy the trip and the journey of their character V, to create all these affiliations with all these characters across Night City, to hate, bond, care for, love. Or if they're just gonna waste it all just to get through the game's main story, and get on this site or I don't know where else to write that they've finished the game and give a rating to it. The game tests you. It makes you confront the dilemma of whether you should go a bit slower on the road and enjoy the surroundings. Or if you will just floor it to the finish line and call it a day.
The dilemma of the ticking death clock on V is what truly makes this game special, we're faced with the inevitability of death and it forces the player and V to make the most of their time, there is no guarantee that V will survive and find a way out so we work under the assumption that we must make the most of our time on this Earth before we die. That limited time is what makes this game special to me, we're forced to live life to the fullest and in spite of all of that V keeps fighting, not only for themselves, but for their friends, the ones they lost, and for a better future, even if it's a future that they won't live to see.
The decisions in this game are quite a tense point, something that makes you think and can even overwhelm you, you feel that your life falls into it, and it is something true, V's life falls into your own hands, a perfect representation of own reality, something that makes the game special, they are not simple choices, they are choices that make you question everything, absolutely everything, but you have to keep fighting. It makes you rethink everything.

And the ending I got... I'm personally proud of it, I haven't seen the other endings, but this one is supposed to be the best one and I definitely don't care if it's the best one or not. This is the end of MY own story. I wouldn't change it for anything, nor would I play the other endings, at least not now, I'm too satisfied with how MY STORY has concluded. Making me rethink all my choices I've made, thinking about whether I did the right thing or not, thinking about everything. But it doesn't matter now. Cause the road has come to an end. And I was glad I made stops on the way. I really wish I could just delete my memory and replay the game from the start. All in all, Cyberpunk 2077 is finally here.
I have felt this game entering my soul completely, the ending is destructive, destructively beautiful, every decision I made, I thought it was going to be wrong, every decision I made my pulse accelerated and it made me nervous, I didn't want to leave, many difficult decisions They are put in the last missions, I have never felt something like this, playing and choosing options with all the fear in the world, as if it were real life. In the network, with Alt and Johnny, I was nervous, overwhelmed, restless, but happy at the same time, also confused and a little sad. But he always chose to live, whether in real life or in Cyberpunk, I want to live, and V deserves to live, simply a leap into the void where I don't know what will happen. But in the end it surprised me, yes... I'm very happy. It is definitely, along with TLOU2, the game that has had the most emotional impact on me, I have cried like never before, I have felt feelings like in no other game, I have felt feelings that I have not felt in TLOU2 for example, a bomb of feelings, whether from happy to the fear. An unforgettable experience, a beautiful experience.
(After two more weeks. I love this fucking game, platinuming this game has been a beautiful journey... well, I haven't platinumed it, I'm missing a trophy... a loseable trophy (fuck you Takemura), one day I'll get it, but for now I'm happy with this, this game is a game that everyone should play, it has a bad reputation for its output errors, but everything is fine now, It's an underrated masterpiece, it made me cry like I was dying lmfao, No ending has impacted me more than the ending of Panam, although the end of Johnny, not the end of Johnny and Rogue, the end of Johnny/V/Panam, has destroyed me too, it has impacted me a lot, I love Johnny and V too much, this is wonderful)

+72h

Cyberpunk 2077 is one of my favorite games right now.
Cyberpunk 2077 is full of incredible messages, it has taught me many things, many values and teachings, small and big things, but important, especially V and Johnny. Communication between relationships, sincerity and honesty, shame, never giving up, art, every decision in your life counts, the fact of continuing to fight, being yourself, and many more things, Cyberpunk is going to change me in little aspects, and it will. is already doing in some aspects.
Fuck you.

To finish a perfect dialogue, for a perfectly imperfect game.


"𝐺𝑜𝑜𝑑𝑏𝑦𝑒 𝑉. 𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑝 𝑓𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔."

- 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧𝐧𝐲 𝐒𝐢𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝

Played on a base model PS4. I mention that because as a title that launched in a state just as bad as, if not worse than, Fallout 76 did, here is where it was said to have had the worst performance. Things have certainly come a long way. There are still bugs and glitches, but Cyberpunk has at least reached a point on the console where it is entirely playable. So while that does not make up for all the scummy things that went on behind the scenes, it does mean I have finally been able to experience the content it offers and can review the actual game itself, rather than just remarking on its technical shortcomings and CD Projekt RED's lies. A game that, while still good, is nowhere near what we were promised it was going to be.

Night City is a massive place filled with enough side-quests and odd jobs to keep you busy for hundreds of hours. Almost all of which have a level of writing comparable to that of GTA V's. The world itself is diverse, teeming with life, and is one of the best I've experienced in all my years of gaming. I often found myself forsaking driving and walking to my objectives just to take in the sights.

Unfortunately, your interactions with it are painfully limited narrative-wise. It's a good story. One filled with incredibly well-written and acted characters I grew to genuinely care about. It's just not even remotely as open-ended as they told us it was going to be. The main plot thread is very linear with each quest largely playing out the exact same way every time right up until you choose an ending. It makes multiple playthroughs kind of boring as you've basically seen everything it has to offer the first time around save for the actual different endings themselves. Yeah, you can pick another background for your avatar, but outside of the occasional dialog option this only affects which prologue you'll receive and has no real impact on the rest of the experience. Compare this to CD's earlier work The Witcher 2 where a choice you make relatively early on can take you to two entirely different areas complete with their own content and you have a noticeable and significant step back for the developer.

There are some other, more minor aspects of the game that aren't up to par as well. Like the character creation system that favors superfluous feeling cosmetic decorations over rather basic means of crafting facial structure. Did we really need the ability to select genital size in lieu of being able to shape foreheads? I think not. The shooting and driving controls are also loose, which led to a lot of tinkering in the menus before they became useable for me.

Forever marred by the dishonest and even illegal business practices of its creators and (at times VERY) rough around the edges, Cyberpunk 2077 is still worth playing for the things it does brilliantly and the myriad number of ways you can use technology to transform your body into the ultimate killing machine. In a lot of ways it was the futuristic gangster life simulator I never knew I wanted. Yet, this is far from the genre redefining RPG it was marketed as and lags behind its peers in some embarrassing ways given the talent putting it out. So when all is said and done this is merely a "good" game when it should have been the next big thing.

7.5/10

Considered 3 stars purely because the bugs are so funny, but ultimately decided against it. Any real fun this game has at the moment (finding random portals into the underworld, freerunning bugs, slipping between the cracks of buildings to get into half finished interiors, etc.) will be "fixed" within the year, while all of the terrible and unsatisfying stat based leveling, mediocre and repetitive missions, vaguely passable but terribly paced story, useless options like dialogue choices and background, and the shockingly braindead AI will likely stick around. Feels less like an RPG and more like a looter shooter, the dildo you find on the ground is probably better than whatever sword you grinded 4 hours to craft.

Have to give a special shoutout to the astoundingly self cannibalizing and needlessly finnicky upgrade paths consisting of armor, armor mods, body mods, weapon classes, weapon mods, hacking mods, stat upgrades, skill upgrades AND perks often but not exclusively tied to the previously mentioned stat upgrades and skill upgrades. There's 30 different ways to get 0.03% damage from firing a gun, and all of them feel equally useless and unsatisfying.

só irei comentar sobre o jogo com base na versão 2.0, mas ja deixando claro q nunca iremos esquecer o lançamento vergonhoso
dito isso esse jogo é fenomenal em quase tudo q se propõe ele é muito acima da media, Night City é absurdo, os personagens são absurdos, a historia é absurda ja contando com as sides q são um show
os gráficos no pc é bem bonito mas é pc né, a trilha sonora dispensa comentários, os bugs mesmo nessa versão ainda continua e são q atrapalham a experiência, acabei perdendo uma das melhores sides pois o jogo bugou a missão toda
agora sim eu posso recomendar a todos com gosto q Cyberpunk é um excelente jogo e cria um universo fantástico pra sequencia e não só em jogos.

Despite everything, I ended up really enjoying this game. It is just too fun to be a bad game. Fundamentally it is a well built game. It just needed more time to cook. And I let it. I waited 2 years after launch to give it another chance. I always knew the game had the potential to be great.

There are only two things that really brings this down for me.
1. There are too many things to do.

It seems like a dumb complaint. Oh no! There is too much content! But, I think it is a real problem for games like this. I think that in a weird backwards way, it can end up making the world feel smaller. When you are doing the same things over and over again, the immersion is broken. You can tell they added all this stuff to pad out run time. And that leads to my second complaint.

2. The main story is too short and the ending feels unsatisfying

They had to add tons of repetitive stuff to distract from the fact that the main story is INCREDIBLY short. Because it is so short, it leads to the ending being very unsatisfying. Both in the way that it leaves you wanting more AND wanting more from the characters. There isn't enough character development for the main characters, let alone the side characters. Everyone is very charming, but I wanted more depth from all of them.

The game is incredibly fun to play. Infinitely replayable with the different playstyles and romance options. It is what saves the game in the end, and is why I have 150 hours in game with just one playthrough. And with it being a game, I would say the gameplay is the most important part.

Cyberpunk 2077: A Mais Quebrantada Perfeição

------------------------------- Lembrando, irei fazer outra analise apenas para Phantom Liberty------------------------------------

Rapaz, eu não vou mentir, Cyberpunk é um assunto muito complicado de se lidar, não por conta do jogo em si, mas principalmente pela comunidade que o ronda, enquanto alguns insistem em se recordas o quão desastroso foi o lançamento desse game, outras pessoas buscam ignorar tal ponto, por ter tido uma boa experiência ou pela séria da Netflix, enquanto afirmar que esse jogo sempre foi bom.

Mas sinceramente falando, eu tendo a afirmar que depois de experienciado parte desse jogo no lançamento, e retornado para finalmente para ter um experiência completa no mundo cyberpunk construido por... Cyberpunk, posso sim dizer que em minha humilde visão...

Cyberpunk nunca foi bom...

Eu sei... Eu sei... tomar um lado nessa discussão logo de cara na resenha pode ser um caminho não tão bom a seguir. Todavia eu preciso demostrar parte do meu descontentamento com essa obra para apenas depois levantar os pontos positivos e concluir do porque de minha nota para ele.

Mesmo jogando ele em sua versão 2.0 ainda assim é notório que esse jogo não é, nem de perto, o que ele deveria ser. E sim, eu sei que existe o argumento que, tal jogo deveria ser julgado pelo o que ele é hoje, não pelo o que ele deveria ser. E sim, esse é um ótimo ponto, e sinceramente, mesmo ao analisar hoje o que ele é, ainda assim, o game carrega consigo problemas que não serão corregidos.

Isso ocorre pois, esses problema estão em sua base inicial, que é extremamente quebrantada, pelo seu desenvolvimento destrutivo. Para exemplificar meu ponto, eu quero usar o mapa do jogo. Night City é uma cidade interessantíssima, de verdade, não apenas e sua direção de arte, que é esplendorosa, mais principalmente pela forma na qual ela apresenta toda a sua proposta, toda a construção de uma cidade Cyberpunk é muito bem feita, porém ainda assim, grande parte das intercessões, e interações que tornariam e esse game um ótimo Rpg não estão lá, não apenas pelo fato de que grande parte dos personagens apresentados parece vazios e certa forma, não digo em aparência pois eles são bem bonitos, mas em diálogos mesmo, uma critica que eu vi lá em 2020, mas ainda se aplica, é que a grande maioria dos personagens são substituíveis ao extremo. Coisa que não acontece e outros jogos de Rpg, um até feito pela própria Cd.

Para puxar minha critica eu iriei utilizar dois jogos como exemplo, o primeiro extremamente aclamado, outro que dividiu opiniões mas que eu amei. The Witcher 3 e um jogo que é interessante nesse quesito, Novigrade é uma cidade que parece estar viva, principalmente por que cada Npc tem uma rotina própria, o que passa aquela sensação que a cidade não depende de você. Isso foi prometido a Cyber, mas não entregue.

O meu segundo exemplo é Starfield... Eu sei... tinha muita gente comparado ele com Cyberpunk, mas sinceramente, acredito que o novo jogo da Bethesda está em uma prateleira muito mais alta... Mesmo que, em Starfield muitos Npcs sejam feios ao extremo, e isso realmente acontece, a construção das cidades se dá por uma outra abordagem, as histórias que podem ser dadas ao jogados por meio de coisas simples no game... Não é difícil estar andando em uma cidade e ouvir alguém falando sobre algo estranho, um cara encarando uma árvore por exemplo, que gere uma Quest secundaria que vai gerar outra e aí vai... também não é difícil chegar em um cara completamente aleatório que você topou com ele do nada, bater um papo e isso também gerar uma Quest secundaria. Essa construção, não ocorre em The Witcher 3, mas ocorre em Starfield... Assim como os Npcs bem feitos e com rotinas programadas, não ocorrem com frequência em Starfield, mas sim em The Witcher 3.

São dois pontos diferente, abordagens diferentes que se fossem unidas em único jogo seria incrível... Mas que Cyberpunk não tem nenhum dos dois, ao menos não de forma bem feita. E a principal problemática é que isso se agrava Muito nas áreas ao redor de Night City. Se era um problema aparente dentro dela... Fora a parada escamba completamente... Essas áreas são vazias, ao ponto de serem desinteressantes, mas que tem um ainda agravante... Em muitos momentos elas são obrigatórias, não opcionais, se elas fossem opcionais por completo, eu não apontaria isso, mas como parte da historia ronda esses momentos, acaba que isso tornou a me incomodar.

Mas ainda assim, Cyberpunk 2077 carrega consigo ótimos pontos positivos, e eu também gostaria de reafirmar, que essa analise é do jogo base, não de Phantom Liberty, digo isso pois alguns pontos que apontei foram corrigidos lá.

A primeira coisa que Cyberpunk acerta definitivamente é em sua história principal... Tudo bem que, o jogo quer que você se foque propositalmente nela, pois é nela que os pontos negativos do jogo menos aparecem, porém, ainda assim ela é muito interessante e tem personagens interessantíssimos além de me prender bastante até o seu final. Vale pontuar que, Cyberpunk 2077 não é um Rpg bruto, ele busca algo muito mais próximo a um Rpg simplificado, assim como The Witcher 3, na qual interpretar o Gerald é difícil exatamente pois ele já tem personalidade, armas e classes definidas. Aqui mesmo que você tenha mais flexibilidade em relação as armas e classes, interpretar o(a) V é complicados exatamente por que parte da personalidade dele parece já pré-moldada, não é difícil ver gente por aí dizendo que tomou a decisão mais próxima que o V tomaria, e não a que ele em si tomaria. Essa característica em si é uma que a CD tem buscado em seus jogos desde o The Witcher 2, então ela não necessariamente é algo ruim. Porém devo dizer que sua melhor aplicação veio em The Witcher 3, não aqui.

Sua trilha sonora é simplesmente INCRIVÉL, cara, disso eu não vou reclamar, meu amigo e minha amiga, que trilha sonora MARAVILHOSA, as vezes eu paro só pra ficar escutando as músicas que esse jogo carrega, de verdade, as produções aqui são realmente muito boas. E são elas, também, que estão presentes no anime de Cyberpunk, muitas pessoas elogiaram lá, assim como eu, e saber que é a mesma trilha sonora me deixa muito feliz.

Outro ponto que eu gostaria de elogiar é a gameplay. Mesmo que originalmente, até 2016, Cyberpunk tenha sido projetado para ser um jogo em terceira pessoa, porém não é hoje, por conta dos grotescos erros de produção. Ainda assim com todos os problemas, a Cd Project Red conseguiu entregar uma gameplay, e um loop de gameplay, extremamente gostoso e agradável, divertido principalmente de se jogar. Talvez, e apenas talvez, o melhor combate com armas brancas em primeira pessoa, da historia dos vídeo games esteja aqui, e eu não estou nem brincando. Mesmo que a estrutura em geral pareça muito mais um looter shooter, do que de fato um Rpg, ela é divertida e boa, então acredito que mesmo nos tropeços no final tenha dado certa.

A atualização 2.0 também trouxe coisas aqui ali que melhoram ainda mais a experiência nesse quesito, poxa usar uma arma enquanto dirige, ao menos ter essa possibilidade, é algo muito interessante. Apenas para citar também que a nova árvore de habilidades está a anos luz da anterior.

No fim das contas, Cyberpunk 2077 foi o maior erro da história dos vídeo games. E lembrar disso é muito importante para que essa mesma história nunca mais se repita de novo. Mas ainda assim, mesmo carregando problemas que nunca serão corrigidos, ele é muito divertido e tem uma ótima história.

Como eu disse eu irei fazer uma analise apenas da Expansão Phantom Liberty, e essa sim eu vou rasgar elogios, pois ela é espetacular. Talvez no futuro, assim como fiz com Dark Souls 2, que foi muito melhorado pelas suas Dlcs, eu troque a nota do jogo, por uma maior. No caso do Dark Souls 2, eu havia dado um 8.2, porém na versão Escholar Of The First Sin, que carrega todas as expansão sua nota subiu para 9.3 em minha opinião. E caso Cyberpunk 2077 receba uma versão assim, sua nota deve subir para mim também.

Porém por enquanto, sua nota é 4/5, 8/10, ou na nota detalhada um solido 8.4/10.

I was really reluctant to try this game. I think all the negative press surrounding it clouded my judgment. Had I not received it as a gift, I would have missed out, big time.

Very few games come close to the quality of writing and world-building here. I was deeply invested in the story and characters from the beginning. Nothing feels out of place, and all the characters react and behave the way you'd expect real people to.

I cannot think of a single bad mission. Even the side quests are very well designed, to the point where they rival the main missions in other games. What strikes me the most is how quests can evolve into something completely different as you progress, defying your expectations.

Not much more needs to be said about the presentation. At this point, the game has cemented itself as a technical showcase, especially on the PC. The soundtrack is also great and fits the atmosphere perfectly.

Not everything is perfect. This is a complex game with many intertwined systems, so it can take a while to get used to it. The story progression can also be a bit confusing, as you often find yourself involved in multiple storylines. This is one of those games that will benefit greatly from repeated playthroughs.

I encountered a few minor bugs, but nothing that detracted from the overall experience. The state of the game seems to have improved dramatically since its release.

I really enjoyed my time with Cyberpunk and was left with a bittersweet feeling when I finished it. Very few games have had the same effect on me, and for that it gets my full recommendation.

This game was a train wreck when it first launched on PC. I instantly refunded and was so disappointed. I returned a few months later, finished the game and really enjoyed it. In 2023 I returned to the game again, I don't know what changed maybe the updates and expansion but I've never felt so immersed in a world. The city is amazing, the story is so good, no other game world had me in such awe. I get on the game frequently just to drive around and take in the beautiful city. Truly an amazing game, sometimes I wish I could actually be in Night City.

Note: I did play the game heavily modded (100+ mods)

With my 500 hours or so with this game, I had one hell of an adventure (Review after patch 1.61)

Let me just start off by saying I love the living hell out of this game. Cyberpunk 2077 is in a dark dystopian future ruled by mega corps set in the New United States of America in the “City of Dreams” aka Night City. The graphics look amazing. I love seeing all the neon lights and pollution in the air that give you an ominous vibe. The visuals are absolutely stunning, the architecture looks futuristic and well designed. You’ll see neon lights, trash, advertisements, crime, corruption everywhere you go which tell a story within itself. But don’t get me wrong visuals still need some work since there’s noticeable pop in and some parts of the city feel lifeless. As for bugs, and believe me when I say this there isn’t that many. As a player from day one yes this game was a massive buggy mess but now I barely encounter bugs. Crashes are still a big problem on PS5 but not so much on XSX. Overall for an RPG, it isn’t all that great since I don’t like how level 50 is the max level and I don’t like how CDPR handled street cred since you can max that out very early on in the game if you’re going for 100%. You can go for all kinds of builds that suit your play style and like any traditional RPG you can invest perk points in skill trees depending on the build you want. You can be netrunner that specializes in quick hacking your enemies or machines. You can be a gunner that specializes with guns and using them to significantly increase the damage of your weapons. Or you can do a blades-only run with stealth where you only use swords and knives to zero your enemies. You also get that sense of immersion. Something many people say is that your choices don’t matter which is NOT true. Your choices don’t generally affect the outcomes of the main story but your choices will affect the outcomes of side quests. Your choices will hurt people for your own personal gain or you can be a pacifist that gives hope to people while gaining respect. Even with 500 hours I still find choices that I missed and witness outcomes I haven’t seen before. And on VERY rare occasions you get outcome depending on the gender you choose. You can also do missions in a variety of ways. You can get through side quests without bloodshed and you can approach situations in many ways. You can steal key cards to get into places safely, you can find a way to sneak in without raising the alarm, you can use your own money to get in safely and of course you can just go in guns blazing if you want. There’s also plenty of different guns that work differently few of which have their own exclusive features. You can use power guns that can knock down enemies or make bullets bounce off walls to hit targets, you can use tech weapons to shoot through walls or you can use smarts guns that can target your enemies around a corner. And as I said before there are guns with exclusive features for example there’s a sniper that has a built in silencer, there’s a sniper that has bullets that can explode, there’s a shotgun that has extra power and can hold more bullets than a regular shotgun or you can get a pistol that has a built in flame mele attack. Weapons that have exclusive features are known as “Iconic” weapons and I highly recommend getting as many as possible to see what you like best. On top of all that you can upgrade your weapons to make them even more powerful or you can add mods that do fire, poison, electric damage, or increase your critical rate etc. And if guns aren’t your thing and prefer to use swords or knives or really any mele weapons you can upgrade and modify them as well. It’s also important to upgrade your weapons via the crafting. This imo is one of the most challenging things to do, I highly recommend looting as much as you can so you can disassemble guns/mele weapons to upgrade your favorite weapons or if you need money you can sell the loot you get. You can also get cyberware which makes gameplay a HELL of a lot more fun. You should use certain cyberware depending on the build you’re going for. For example if you going for gunner build you should get berserk cyberware or if you’re going with a blades only run then get a sandevistan, then again you can experiment however you want to with build you so desire. Clothing in this game looks so great that it’s a shame you never actually get to see V wear it when exploring the city or in combat. There’s also a good selection of vehicles to purchase. Unfortunately, some cars can be very expensive to obtain and you CAN’T customize them. The sound design for this game is well done. This is definitely one of those games you should play with headphones to get every last detail of what you can hear. The sounds of AVs, cars, people, advertisements and gunshots echoing through Night City sounds perfect. There’s even a district called Pacifica (this district is abandoned by the general public due to poverty and crime) where the speaker system that plays advertisements are broken and glitched out which I believe is an amazing little detail. Speaking of sounds, the music is among some of the best I’ve ever heard for a video game. Definitely take the time to listen to all the radios to see what music suits your tastes, the music is so damn good that sometimes I would just drive around to hear the music instead of head to my next objective. And beside the music you hear from the radio, the ambient music you can hear while exploring the city. It adds another layer to the ominous vibe you’ll get from this game. And holy cow the stealth and combat music is GODLY. And the ost you’ll listen to during the main story and side stories fits in the atmosphere so well whether something sad, interesting, exciting or dark is going to happen. The ost just knows how to play along with the vibe. Other than that, there are plenty of things to do in Night City that can take a little over 100 hours to 100%.

As for the story… it’s fucking AWESOME! The main story always had me hooked. Something I found very disappointing is that your life path doesn’t affect how the story will play out at all. But even at that, the story was just incredible. I absolutely loved the characters you’ll meet. They all have personality and their voice acting never feels off, just on point. I love the main characters V, I love the idea of being a solo Edgerunner and a professional one at that to be the best in Night City. I absolutely love the combination of dark noir storytelling in this game. There are many times where people inevitably get hurt or zeroed and it’s sad to see it happen. Even if didn’t have an attachment to them I at least feel sympathetic. And like I said before, your choices can and will hurt people. I had many times where I felt guilty and sadly there’s no such thing as happy endings in Night City. Side quests were also INCREDIBLE. You’ll meet all kinds of people you can befriend and very few you can romance. I also highly recommend reading as many computer messages as you can because you can learn new things about certain characters that I would’ve never known about. And that’s not all but if you really want to dedicate yourself to this game, READ ALL THE DATA SHARDS YOU FIND. Not going to lie, many of them might be uninteresting but it helps you understand how dark the world of Cyberpunk 2077 truly is. You’ll find data shards about what happened to the world and you can even come up with a timeline of what happened within the last 100 years or so. You’ll even read about shards from people moments before they flatline. If you care enough about lore and world building I highly recommend reading as many as you can.

Overall, I believe CDPR did a FANTASTIC job with Cyberpunk 2077 despite the messy launch. They did a great job on doing their research on the Cyberpunk genre. They nailed the aesthetic of Night City to fit in with Cyberpunk and nailed the storytelling to fit in as well. And man I just can’t get enough of the gameplay. With each new playthrough I just love using different builds and picking different choices for different outcomes whether is bad or good. I don’t blame people for disliking or hating this game as even I still have my fair share of problems as well since I can’t say this is my favorite RPG, not even by a long shot. But I can say for sure this one is definitely my favorite video game of all time. I can’t wait to see what CDPR has in store for me whenever Project Orion releases. (I will rewrite this review after the Phantom Liberty expansion and 1.7 update are out)

An incredible, gorgeous backdrop - it is aesthetically as cyberpunk as anyone could hope for. Towering buildings and layered streets creating a city where its citizens could spend an entire day and never see the sun.

It's a shame, then, that the game is deathly allergic to exploring any of the most interesting ideas that cyberpunk as a setting has to offer. It tells you that body modification is no issue whatsoever, go nuts pal, and refuses to let you even change your haircut. It repeatedly dips its toes into the politics of the world via sidequests, only to come across as scatterbrained (or like the writers didn't communicate with each other) - every attempt at digging into anticapitalist ideas or really just anything on a scale larger than the individual feels like it was included because they had to, because the audience would expect it, not because they actually wanted to explore these ideas by telling stories. Johnny Silverhand is as much an ideologue as he is a rockstar asshole, but the game could not care less about assigning him actual beliefs beyond "grr arasaka make me angy" and it makes him come across as arbitrary and poserish, gesturing at a vague notion of doing things "for the people" without really bothering to explain what his vision of the world without megacorps would look like. Similarly, any quest chains that suggest that you can meaningfully change the world always end in a punchline or some reason why you're unable to change Night City away from what it is, which would be fine if it felt like it was coming from Night City and not from a game developer who didn't want to implement that.

It has plenty to say about the individual, though. From the main story to several sidequests, the game is all about death and legacy and it's actually capable of exploring that in interesting ways at times. V has (unfortunately) decided that the way to become a legend is to have this rise 'n' grind mentality where you just become really good at doing a bunch of different jobs, a lot of which are just helping the police kill people for jaywalking. Unfortunately, this hyper-focus on the individual means that every other part of the story feels weird and unfocused if it's not about V. In truth, this barely had to be a cyberpunk story! It requires some sci-fi elements, sure, but you could plop this plot into a Watch_Dogs game. The complete lack of interest in Night City's other inhabitants completely squanders this setting that is dripping with charisma and a fun level of campy cyberpunk aesthetics.

I wish I had a way to conclude this, but I could talk about this game for hours and not feel finished. I wanted to write a review that wasn't about the bugs or about the (serviceable but unremarkable) gameplay - I wanted to write about the potential I saw in this game. One of Disco Elysium's biggest strengths to me is the way it weaves the characters into the fabric of the city. Cuno, Klaasje, they could only exist in Revachol and you can't take them out of the city without making them into different characters. Part of understanding Revachol is getting to know people like them. I won't ask that every game have the same writing quality as Disco Elysium, but some of the more prominent side characters get this treatment in CP2077 and I wish they had extended that treatment to those with shorter appearances as well. Making these NPCs feel integrated into the city (or like they're part of a bigger set of events) is a great way to get me invested in the setting. Night City may look hundreds of times larger in scale than Revachol, but it feels smaller, and that's a fucking shame.

Quase 3 anos de molho e cá estamos nós com o Cyberpunk 2077 platinado!

Com menos bugs ele se tornou bem decente, apesar de não ser um game tão complexo como prometia a CD. Os pontos fortes dele são a ambientação, missões secundárias e a mecânica de tiro, no mais é aquele padrão de rpg de ação em mundo aberto que já estamos habituados. A narrativa e as personagens também são grandes destaques. E o Johnny Silverhand é brabíssimo! Keanu Reeves foi uma adição perfeita ao Cyberpunk. Fico na expectativa de como será Phantom Liberty.

Nota final: 2077/100 - “Ele queimou metade da cidade apenas para provar que estava certo e queimou a outra metade apenas por diversão.” 🛰️

It's a shame that people spent so much time and energy talking about the buggy and unfinished state Cyberpunk released in, because it really overshadows how poor the core game is.

The Good:

Somewhat allows for a variety of builds and approaches - Occasionally interesting characters and sidequests - Generally competent writing

The Bad:

The map is deceptively dense with icons to hide a shallow, uninteractive world with little to do - Largely uninteresting, unrelatable cast - Both V and Silverhand are eye-roll-worthy edgelords who won't shut up - Boring MMO style combat with bullet sponge enemies - Managing junk loot takes up far too much of your time - Unbalanced skills and weapons make the gameplay trivial - Unfulfilling main plot lacks motivation and ends quickly and with a dud - Completely sidesteps most of what makes dystopian futures interesting fiction

The Ugly:

Absolutely ridden with bugs and glitches of all kinds - Constant crashes - You will live in constant fear of a game breaking bug - Plenty of choices and none of them ultimately matter

---

The most anticipated game of the past decade, especially post-2015 after the runaway success of CDProjekt Red's previous smash hit, The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077 has finally emerged from an 8-year development hell cycle during which the hype surrounding it has been propped up by a suffocating ad campaign and constant puff pieces in the gaming press; did it live up to the expectations? Absolutely not.

What was promised as a veritable revolution for the RPG genre, the next evolutionary step in the Deus Ex formula, with impactful moral choices steering a deep, involving plot into drastically different directions, all set on the stage of a bustling, organic, fully explorable city with advanced AI routines and endless opportunities, actually turned out to be a simple façade with an open world with nothing to do and choices that don't matter in the grand scheme of things, with the icing on the cake being the gameplay loop of a Borderlands-style lootershooter where you spend just as much time sorting out the trash in your inventory as you do playing the game, and the cherry on top of that icing being the fact the game is so broken (at the time of writing this - four months after release) to be borderline unplayable for some and a frustrating mess for others.

The premise is that you are an individual known only as "V", just another bland jaded nihilistic nobody living in Night City, a metropolis populated with bland jaded nihilistic nobodies, and you get roped by a local imbecile (read: disposable tutorial character) into an impossible heist to steal "the Relic", a valuable piece of technology owned and secured by a powerful Japanese corporation. Typical quest hook for "things go tits up" and so they do: V finds himself with a chip in his head containing the digitized consciousness of early 21st century post-marxist terrorist and rockerboy douchebag extraordinaire Johnny Silverhand, esquire, who frequently pops up as a digital hallucination to spout off some cartoonishly jaded cynical remark. V now has to embark on an epic quest to find someone who can remove the chip from his head before Silverhand takes over his body in his quest for booze, drugs, poontang and smashing capitalism, in that exact order, overwriting V's consciousness in the process, effectively killing him. Silverhand is played by Keanu Reeves who has to be praised for managing to record so many voice lines in between his morning shower and coffee, or at least that's how he comes off, since he sounds positively asleep for the entirety of his screen presence. His performance took me back to the good old days when Hollywood stars would show up for videogame voice over duty in their pajamas and yawn their way through the recording sessions. It is nostalgic if nothing else. He even gets his own "one last gig" side story, which culminates in one of the most low energy and cringe-inducing concerts I have seen. I suggest you look it up to see for yourself.

It is small wonder then that V is so desperate to get rid of the Keanu Reeves in his head, and this is where the supporting cast comes into play as V bounces from contact to contact trying to get help with his problem. These character, as mentioned before and not unlike V himself, constitute a majority of money-obsessed nihilistic assholes, flat, materialistic, backstabbing schemers who might be right at home in a dystopian setting, but who start making you weary as you meet nothing but. The few and far between exceptions are the slightly more interesting characters driven by duty or loyalty to family: these are the best moments in the story, and they are almost all missable side content. It is safe to say that by sticking strictly to the relatively short main plot as many players are likely to do, you will miss the best the game has to offer, which is already not much, including all of the inevitable romance subplots we have come to expect in an RPG made in a post-Mass Effect world.

Describing the romance aspect in particular is a good way to introduce the next area in which the game disappoints and misdelivers: choice and consequence or the lack thereof. The four "significant" romance options in the game, only two of which available for each gender, present no real progression towards the intimacy status but rather drop it on you out of the blue regardless of which dialogue choices you have made during your interactions with the character: try as you might to drive these people away, the game will always present you with the romance option when the time is ripe, which makes the situations all the more awkward when they occur. Suddenly a character will be giving you the look and you'll be offered the "Kiss" option despite no chemistry existing between them and V at any point before then. None of your decision regarding your attitude amount to anything, as it all funnels down towards the same outcome. Compare and contrast with Bioware relationships which, while far from perfect, can be screwed up to the point the other character refuses you or even leaves the game entirely, and you might see the step backwards that happened with Cyberpunk.

But what if you do decide to choose this unearned romance option, are you then expected to be faithful to this partner? Are there consequences for not doing so? Can you anger them so they will leave you? Simpler still: can you interact with them romantically outside of the scripted romance moments? The answer to all of that is, of course, no. These relationships are introduced as something serious but then everyone goes their own way and you can't even go see them to have a chat, as they won't give you the time of day. At the end of the game a character will even berate you for never going to see them anymore, but if for some reason you were to wiki where they are and go see them, they still would have nothing to tell you. It has to be said the the writing per se isn't bad by any stretch, it's just that the writers have to work with that plot and those characters, so they get little chance to shine.

The lack of impact of your decisions also applies to the much boasted-about tactical and moral decision which were a large part of the marketing material and were promised to significantly influence both single missions and the story at large. Here too we can only call those promises half-truths if we feel generous and and outright lies if we do not: while, yes, you can approach a small number of missions in a variety of ways (bribery, stealth, hacking, charisma or violence) and these will indeed result in different outcomes for that mission (though never outright failure, only different flavours of success) these outcomes exist in a vacuum: never will these decisions influence anything outside of the mission that contains them, with the exception of very rare, very minor callbacks in later missions, which are ultimately entirely inconsequential.

Practical example is the E3 demo mission that everyone has likely seen: in it you are tasked with acquiring a drone from some punks belonging to a gang called Maelstrom. You options are to outright pay for the drone with your own money, go in shooting and steal the drone or again pay for the drone but with a chip infected with a virus that kills the punks, allowing you to make off with the booty. One would expect your actions to cause a rift between you and this Maelstrom faction, and the promotional material unambiguously promised so, however this is not the case, since that faction doesn't exist... because no factions exist as a game mechanic: you have no reputation that can be compromised with anyone the way it can in, say, a Fallout game where a faction might cast you out if you work for their enemies. Cyberpunk has none of that to offer because it was all entirely cut: the promised gang drive-bys against you? Gone, even the cops don't chase you for more than one block if you cause a fuss in the streets. The game just isn't built for that. Cause too much of a ruckus and cops will simply start endlessly spawning behind you when on foot and kill you and that'll be that. Or just drive away for thirty seconds are see everything return to copacetic.

The permanent bounties on your head seen in the likes of Red Dead Redemption? None of that here. As for your decisions in the mission above, all that changes is whether the maelstrom will offer you to parley or attack you the one time you will meet them again in an optional side story of little consequence as you will never interact with them outside of that. Oh you will meet Maelstrom members here and there in the game, but they will be nothing more than cosmetic skins for generic thug enemies you can kill for XP and loot without repercussions.

Is the main storyline at least influenced by your decisions throughout the game? Of course it isn't: like in 95% of AAA games out there, you get three or so choices at the very end on which ending you want to see, with the availability of one option contingent on whether or not you have completed an optional questline. All this does is unlock a slighly more varied version of the final mission, where everything plays out more or less the same up to the lackluster ending. Can you at least live with the consequences of the ending you chose? No: finishing the game boots you back to the main menu and lets you load from before the final mission or start a New Game+ from the beginning. All you get are a few phone calls during the credit sequence where NPCs either yell at you or congratulate you and that is your lot. Or it might be your lot, since the game crashed on me during the credits, denying me even that bit of closure.

What about the side activities around the city outside of the major main and optional quests? Simply put, there is nothing to do aside from shopping for augmentations, guns and pants, then missions and encounters that all boil down to killing everything you see for XP and loot and/or retrieve something/someone for a cash reward. There are bars you can sit at and drink for no reason or consequence, there are hookers you can pay to watch a blurry, shaky 30 second sex cutscene with all the sexy bits censored Austin Powers style, you can buy cars you will never use, and that is it for the side content. It feels like the developers filled the map with icons to give the illusion of quantity, but it's very soon apparent how those icons correspond to nothing worth doing and there is little behind all that icon spam that just gets on the way of finding what you do need. The game tries its best to force you to do side activities by immediately saddling you with massive debt: you start with a staggering 25.000 credits debt with your cyber surgeon and your car gets smashed and you need to spend a premium on a new one. Too bad you can just ignore your debt forever and just steal cars the entire game with no repercussion. The surgeon never calls you to remind you the money you owe him, not even in the aforementioned end credits, in which he appears.

So the story and content are a big dud, but how is the gameplay? You can forgive a lot to a game if at least one between story and gameplay is done well. Unfortunately this is not the case with Cyberpunk. For some baffling reason, CD Project Red decided to go down the lootershooter route for their sprawling RPG: as such you will quickly find yourself with an inventory full to the brim with trash loot you must either scrap for crafting materials or sell for pennies on the dollar (a gun sold in a shop for 50.000 credits will net you a few hundred at most) at one of the sell-a-loot machines scattered around the city or any of the stores. Yes, the local sushi joint will be happy to buy the 26 blood covered revolvers you have looted off the corpses of the latest gangsters you have killed. This means you will spend so much time faffing around with the inventory, slowly selling and scrapping each piece of armament and clothing (clothing is armor by the way: a pair of rare tier assless chaps will offer more protection than an uncommon tier bulletproof vest). It's a chore.

In the game's favor, the combat is studied in such a way that you can pretty much approach it in any way you want: fancy going in guns blazing? Not recommended since the gunplay is spongy and unsatisfying, but you can. Want to jump in with a katana or blade arms and start hacking away, or remotely hack people's implants with your own? Quite possible. Want to sneak in with suppressed weapons? Look up the very specific build that allows your to do that and you can. Want to snipe from a distance? Buy the right sniper rifle and you can. So the game does provide a variety of combat options but still manages to trip and fall on its face because of how broken and unbalanced some of these options are.

The sniping in particular is broken to the point of pure comedy: since this is a modern game you can tag enemies to see them through walls, in fact the game autotags every enemy who has detected you. Also you can easily acquire a class of sniper rifles that fire through walls. Not only through walls in fact, but through absolutely anything, whole buildings, even mountains, meaning the enemies don't have a chance in hell to see you, let alone fight back. And if you're thinking this must be a bug, the game has unlockable skill that give you huge damage bonuses when you fight that way. This translates in practice to you reaching a mission area, tagging every enemy in the building with a net ping, then sniping them all through a dozen walls while they wonder what's going on and barely react, then you stroll in and complete whichever objective you came for, completely unopposed. Similarly overpowered are the melee builds you can make, which render most of the combat absolutely trivial.

This doesn't simply break the gameplay, it also reveals yet another problem with the narrative structure of the game: it really feels like Cyberpunk went for a complete power fantasy, wanting to make the player feel like an unstoppable cyber commando rather than exploring any of the ethical and social downsides of a world that has fully embraced transhumanism, which is what Deus Ex has done for the past twenty years and speculative science fiction at large for the past seventy or so. Cyberpunk 2077 isn't interested in any of that: all it wants to do is present cybernetic augmentations as aspirational superpowers and nothing else. The developers could have given the player the opportunity of siding with a Luddite faction opposed to cyber augmentations (faction already present in the source material) but they have none of that: the player has no say in V's attitude towards cyber enhancements, and frankly neither does anyone else in this world.

Another aspect that makes Night City completely lacking in believability is the overarching narrative of Johnny Silverhand's revolutionary rebellion against corporate control. Johnny speaks as if revolution is happening at any moment, as if the powder keg is waiting for the spark to ignite it, he's trying to be some kind of Alan Moore-esque anarchoid figure, a feeling further compounded by the fact his host character is named "V"... However, nothing in Night City even so much as hints to his views being the case: people seem absolutely content with their existence, they are fat and wealthy, showing no real sign of discontent towards their corporate overlords. As such, Johnny's "down with capitalism" shtick comes off as more of a tantrum than a relatable, cogent struggle the player can get behind (not that the choice is offered in any tangible way).

It could be argued that this is intentional: that Johnny is indeed "a Relic" of the past, uselessly struggling against an oligarchy that has been fully accepted by society and which is ruling it as a stable system. It can be argued, but then I must ask... what is the point? It is as if the game developers deliberately sidestepped any aspect that could make their carefully crafted power fantasy look like a serious dystopian future, hilariously this is a future set a few short decades after a nuclear apocalypse, yet that has no bearing on the story or world at all: there are even buses traveling between states on the highway like nothing is wrong. This really feels more like a modern day Los Angeles with some extra neon signs and aggressive body piercing more than any future dystopia.

If you take out of cyberpunk as a genre its cautionary tale element about overreliance on technology and the alienation that derives from it, then what's left is just another flavor of Marvel-style aspirational popcorn superhero schlock... and then what is the point of even writing cyberpunk-themed fiction?

I don't even feel like spending too many words on the bugs and glitches under whose weight this game agonizes: it is all too easy to find petabytes of information about those, and I'm confident they will be fixed in future updates. It's a shame that people spent so much time and energy talking about how buggy and unfinished Cyberpunk is, because it really overshadows how poor the core game is. Suffice it to say that playing the game in its current state will drive you up the wall at the 20th crash.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a mess on every aspect: narratively by being such a low stakes and shallow affair, gameplay-wise with the constant self-sabotage of its mechanics and as a piece of software for its absolutely dreadful stability. Technical issues can be fixed, but the core gameplay design and narrative choices cannot. As such it is only recommended for people looking to feel like an overpowered, uncomplicated cybernetic John Wick, which is precisely why Keanu Reeves was chosen as a testimonial. Everyone else who might be looking for the next Deus Ex need not apply.

Thought I'd give this a quick replay before the Phantom Liberty update and goddamn.

Even on a third play through I still love it to pieces.

I still discover new things, I still find it hard to do things that'll hurt the characters I like because I just fall in love with them all over again. I still lose track of time and end up playing till 4 in the morning.

Even after a 3rd play through I am excited for a 4th.


It definitely has its problems but I am more than happy to look past them for everything else. So fucking excited for Phantom Liberty, give me more cyberpunk forever and ever please and thank you <3

Não é fácil escrever sobre Cyberpunk 2077 com poucas palavras. Acredito que o melhor resumo seria uma jornada única, problemática, conturbada e impressionante.

Minha relação com o game já é de longa data. Tentei jogá-lo no lançamento e era simplesmente impossível. Tentei novamente 1 ano depois, após meu amigo dizer que se divertia mesmo quando o jogo ficava a míseros 12fps, e não consegui me entreter sequer 1 minuto das 5 horas jogadas. Mas, depois de ver o anúncio de Phantom Liberty e o Patch 2.0, resolvi comprar o bundle e entrar na jornada.

Artisticamente, o game é impressionante. O visual, os sons, a caoticidade da cidade e tudo acontecendo ao mesmo tempo representam perfeitamente a estética cyberpunk. A história é muito profunda e cheia de nuances; só depois de muito tempo você consegue entender sobre o que ou sobre quem é a história. Dezenas de side quests muito bem escritas, com muitos vínculos para serem criados, dando um sentimento de pertencimento cada vez maior. Mas, sem dúvidas, Phantom Liberty é o ponto alto do jogo, em todos os aspectos.

Quanto à jogabilidade em si, é bem prazerosa. Aproveitei bastante com uma build de agilidade, focada em fuzis de assalto, submetralhadoras, bombas e granadas. Os implantes fornecem status e habilidades que complementam perfeitamente qualquer estilo que a gente queira adotar no jogo, com a possibilidade de expandir ainda mais as opções com a DLC.

Atualmente, o game possui dois problemas graves. O primeiro são os bugs, que mesmo atualmente são bem presentes, inclusive acontecendo no final do game e estragando um pouco minha experiência. O segundo é a eterna promessa. O game é ótimo, mas mesmo hoje, após 10 anos do anúncio, ele ainda não entrega tudo o que foi prometido e nunca vai entregar. Espero que a CD Projekt consiga amadurecer esse aspecto para o próximo game, um escopo enxuto, entregável e, acima de tudo, bem feito.

Até mais, Night City!

the following is based off my first two hours:

really not impressed with this whatsoever. even the technical bugs like trees popping in sporadically aside, the gameplay is unbelievably clunky and the writing is both bland in concept and bland in delivery. i'm a huge stealth fan and went into this with that in mind, dumping the majority of my points in the sneaky stats. i then sit through what has to be, what, an hour of molasses pacing with nothing really happening? no, really, i picked the corporate tree and here's what your fun, fun first hour consists of:

walk out of bathroom, walk down halls with little of interest, sit in elevator, walk down more halls, talk to my boss for ten minutes, get a fun sounding mission, don't go on the mission yet, sit in helicopter, fly for five minutes, go to bar, walk around bar, sit down, another ten minute conversation with another guy discussing the fun mission, other guys come over, they tell me i don't get to go on fun mission, i frown, my character's friend gets mad and makes it seem like something's about to happen, nothing happens, the guys go away, and then i'm treated to a big montage of my character doing things that i wouldn't want him to do, which is weird because this is an RPG, right?

actually, that's the weirdest thing. why am i not getting any choices? whenever your main character is prompted to say something, the options both seem to offer the same sentiment--that is, if you get any options at all. sometimes, you just get a line that you're forced to say along with the choice to get a bonus throwaway line. still gotta pick the forced dialogue in the end. and this really sucks, because my character keeps saying things that i really don't want him to say. it feels very fallout 4 all over again, and that pisses me off. compare this to deux ex's last two entries where the player is offered multiple dialogue options straight from the start that all have different intentions and, more importantly, give the player a 100% view of what the hell they're going to be saying.

and speaking of which, it's that saying that bothers me. the delivery of the lines are just terrible. your main protagonist, should you choose to be male, sounds like a dumb yokel, and this is particularly funny if you start your background in corporate. he's not hick or anything, but he sounds like he's down a few braincells--there's one line in particular when he mocks his friend for "not being nice" and he sounds like a damn child. there's an encounter with an asian police officer too featuring some real poor English and some even poorer interaction with the player's friend that's just eyerolling. while we're on that topic, there's a part where you get in the car and your friend starts driving, and this... just horrible trap beat starts playing and i could not have frowned harder. i went into the options to see what the radio key was--F, or R, or something--and i mashed the hell out of it. a fruitless endeavor. trapped in the trap.

i said something about the writing, right? it's not really bad or anything--just boring and uninteresting. i won't go into this too much because it's unfair to just say something's bad and not elaborate, and i literally can't remember what any of the dialogue was. nothing memorable. also, any given scene just looks like a generic synthwave album cover. giving credit to deus ex again here, that game's developers saw the writing on the wall and were very forward thinking in their aesthetic compared to this, a vague idea of what cyberpunk looks like.

anyway, i want to end this talking about the gameplay--specifically the stealth, since that's what i cared about going in, what i built my character around, what i brushed up on in the tutorial, and what i set out to do, clearing the entire first mission with no deaths.

it sucks. here, i'm going to describe the process for you. i might mis-remember some exact keystrokes but the sentiment is the same: FIRST, you hit your crouch toggle key. oops, hold on, the crouch toggle key broke, so you have to go into the options, bind the toggle key to the other crouch, and then bind it back (you'll be doing this a lot, so get used to it). okay, what were we doing again? right, stealth. so, you crouch successfully, your first hurdle accomplished, and then you see some enemies. NOW, you have to hit tab and go into batman vision mode. now, you highlight enemies and mark them (with a different key, of course). why are you doing this? why aren't you just going in and sneaking?

because there's no. fucking. leaning. in a game. with fucking. stealth.

why is leaning important? because it allows you to take cover behind objects and peek to see where hostiles are and what they're doing. what's the alternative? you literally have no idea what direction someone's facing so you just bumble out from behind cover and get immediately spotted. therefore, your only solution is to have to highlight enemies so that doesn't happen. but then, this means you're having to spend the damn game constantly with these glow-in-the-dark villains, something that's a powerup or unlockable in games like dishonored or, again, deus ex. anyway, i'm getting off track, let's continue with the stealth process.

so now you've successfully highlighted them, and now you're ready to hunt. you sneak up from behind someone and press F. now you have them in a vague chokehold? it doesn't really... look right. anyway, now you have to decide if you want to kill them or knock them out, so you press F again or whatever the key is. a weird animation plays where your character looks like he's grasping at air, and then, congrats, he's on the ground. NOW, you have to look at the body and hold R to carry it. okay, now we've got to bring it somewhere. you go to a hiding spot and you press--what? what do you press? oh. oh you know. E. and congrats, you've finally achieved your first stealth takedown. now, just to sum it up, let's go through all the steps one more time.

you hit control, then you hit tab, then you hit your second mouse button, then you unhit tab, then you walk forward, then you press f, then you press f again, then you hold r, then you walk, then you press e.

i want you to imagine an exasperated AVGN face right now because WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

i keep bringing up deus ex but holy fuck, in that game you just hold q, they're automatically being dragged, and then you let go and continue on. no need to highlight enemies either because the game goes in third person when you take cover. or hell, if you don't want that, dishonored lets you, in first person, you guessed it: LEAN. YOU CAN LEAN.

i don't really know where the story goes from here, and i don't know how the other backgrounds start, and i don't know how much more fun it is to play the game like an action hero--but i don't care. this was enough. now, i'll probably be back after a year or two of patches and updates, but for sixty dollars? you could do a lot, lot, lot better.

[EDIT: apparently you can lean! you have to specifically have a weapon out and then attempt to aim it while at a corner. seeing as i was playing as a stealth pacifist, i saw no reason to have a gun out at all. that's a good thing! there is definitely still way too many buttons for what should be a simple action. but this definitely makes this more playable, now. i'll update these first impressions with a fuller look if i continue on]

[EDIT 2: yeah it still sucks. play deus ex]

So after a couple of weeks of everyone shit-storming everything and everyone that has to do with this game, I've finally finished it and feel conflicted. Cyberpunk has been my most anticipated game for quite a while and I was SO sure I was going to like it. And I did, a lot. Really a lot. But all the good moments I had with the game, should be overshadowed by the state in which the game was released and the ambition that clearly was in the way of making this a more streamlined experience, right? But they aren't.

By now probably everyone heard of or has seen technical issues this game is plagued with. I think the majority of those are fixable issues, which over time should not be a problem anymore. And the weird thing is, I've encountered so few of these, that I somehow feel I've played a different game. I kept track of technical issues in my 70 hours and it amounted to 1 game-crash, 1 mission that was stuck and I had to reload the last save to continue, 2 circling cars (as you've probably seen in a vid) and one NPC doing the notorious t-pose. These are things that were really obvious, of course there were also some random weird things happening here and there if you looked long and close enough, but that's something I've come to expect in an open-world game. (disclaimer: I've played on a very powerful gaming pc)

There are few issues in this game however, that will not be fixable easily. And why they make me so angry is, because those mechanics partly were not really necessary to be in the game at all imho. Let's start with the RPG elements. I've played through the game on very hard from the beginning and even early on I had no problems in any of those fights. The more I progressed in the game though, the more and more obvious it became to me how useless all of these perks were, because none of it really mattered. After I had found good guns, I was able to breeze through without having to have any sort of strategy. (The game is just far too easy) And I was fine with that, gunplay was fun enough to keep me engaged. But all the time and development that went into developing the skill-tree should've been time the devs spent on the more important parts. The same goes for crafting: usually I like to go the crafting route in games but here it really felt like the absolute waste of time and skill-points. Both of these facts really lead me to not spending any points in the late game at all and I didn't make a difference. A lot more time that could've went into polishing the good parts of the game.
It's an open world game with a huge city, so we have to talk about crowd simulation and traffic. Thats the weakest point of the game, so weak even, I can't really believe how they could abandon something so fundamental. The AI is so terrible, it kills the immersion if you look at it for too long. This goes for enemy AI (rendering some of the fights and stealth gameplay unbearable) and NPCs on the street, as well as cars. It's practically non-existent in some cases and I'm not sure if this is something game devs can adress at this point, but it really hurts an otherwise unrivaled world-building. Cyberpunk wants to play in the same league as the best open world games and therefore has to be compared. And if you compare it to the best, it really falls short when it comes to those aforementioned basic things. Red dead felt much more alive and the NPCs all had some kind of personality, they reacted to you dynamically. Sure, the era it plays in really made it easier as cities where smaller and had much less people in it. But even GTA in a bigger city at least made it work to a certain degree and CDPR should've put much more resources in making these things believable. Also: the apartment was a missed opprtunity, as it has no use. As were the cars, they are designed so well, interior and exterior look absolutely stunning, but driving them is just not fun. When you sit in a car with an npc (which you do quite often), they handle the cars even clunkier. I also would've wished for more places to visit, play games or watch movies or something like that. And whether decisions make an impact or not, doesn't really matter while playing it, because you never really know if a certain outcome is linked to an action. The world doesn't really react much to the things you do.

So, sounds like I don't like the game right? To be honest: I really love cyberpunk. Because it succeeds with so many other things. Let me say again, that I've been lucky enough to play it on a powerful gaming rig and with a really good pair of headphones. Obviously the graphics are the main selling point of the game, but the sound design is nothing short of being absolutely amazing. Walking down a street you are bombarded by such a rich sound scenery, it's unbelievably immersive. Deep bass penetrates the walls of a club you pass (by the way, all the clubs in this game are just breathtaking), flying cars make menacing sounds overhead and ads roar through loud speakers. There is so much going on, it's hard not to be immersed. The music selection in radios is superb, capturing exactly the variety of vibes I was expecting of a cyberpunk game. But also the soundtrack itself is absolutely stunning. The way some of the missions are accentuated by dark electronic and ambient soundscapes is just purely cinematic. When you now combine the top notch audio design with visuals that often time left me speechless, it's hard to not give the highest praise for the devs. To me, the way the city is build, even after 70hrs in it, is still unbelievable. The level of vertically and clutteredness is unseen in a game. Lighting, may it be the artificial neon lights everywhere that drench the city in colors, or the natural light changing the entire atmosphere from dusk till dawn and in the night. Reflections you see in puddles and on your car or windows. All of this is so beautiful (in parts thanks to raytracing features). I really felt like wandering through one of my favorite movies, blade runner. It is so beautiful, I really didn't want to use any fast travel, even though the driving mechanics, like i said earlier, are not really good. I used every opportunity to traverse the city by foot or car. I don't want to spoil too much, but a certain parade is one of most stunning set pieces I've ever seen in a video game or movie for that matter. Wandering through Japantown or through Little China, looking down from the high rises, are the most beautiful areas in an open world game I've ever explored. But there are so many more places, where I just had to stand still and soak it all in. Even the badlands are nailed well, especially when you drive out of the city into the sunset. There are just so many moments that feel to good to be true in a videogame. But this could just be a walking simulator, if all thats good in it, is the world to look at. And its not. Because the other part of this game being SO good, is the story and it's characters. RDR2 set the bar for how fleshed out characters and their relationships can be in an open world game that feels cinematic. Cyberpunk comes close, when it comes to delivering characters you feel invested to and missions that are written well and staged beautifully. Most of the characters you meet, feel unique and have personality and lore you find scattered across the world helps flesh out everything. Missions take you to a variety of distinct places, making sure you don't miss any of the beautiful sights this game has to offer. Often times you have conversations on rooftops or outside the city with insane views. You are on concerts, you see montages of drinking binges or flashbacks, Silverhand often seemlessly fades in and out of your vision commenting on a lot of the things going on around you. All of it is edited so nicely, feeling like scenes out of a movie. Not only the main story missions shine with great production values, but also almost all of the side missions are extensive and written so well, delivering some of the best moments this game has to offer. The main plot evolving around mega corporation Arasaka feels like a familiar story about intrigues and conspiracy’s, but what I found way more interesting is the development of the protagonist and a certain other individual. I really don't want to go into much detail, as I think it's best experienced on your own, but there are also tons of references to other popular media and very cool easter eggs.

So where do I stand in terms of rating this game? Like I said in the beginning: i'm conflicted. Objectively it's a good, if not great, but no perfect game. And I think the game would have not received the same amount of hate, if the marketing and promises of the devs had not hyped it beyond realistic expectations. Saying that this game is outright bad though, is just wildly ignorant of the plenty good things you can find here and an exaggerated reaction imo.
The game for me is a dream come true. So I am biased, i know. I really didn't want it to end and can't wait to visit again. So I should give a 10 out of 10. But the game should have been different as well. It should have been an action adventure, without the crafting, the items, the leveling, maybe more like a polished naughty dog game, with a smaller more scripted world, because the game shows, when you do, what they want you to do, it’s amazing. So for now I'll stick to a 9. I wish the devs would see this as the baseline for the world and stay with it for as long as hello games did with no mans sky. I think Night City has so much potential and a lot of great stories could be told in it. So I'd love the gaming community rather encourage the devs to explore more of this vision, rather than trashing them for bad decisions marketing and management made over the past years. I think it's something that can be seperated legitamitely. And I think the game can become an easy 10 in the future.

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.