"Just focus on tying up all your loose ends - then you and I are leaving this city once and for all." ~ Judy Álvarez
For many, Cyberpunk 2077 will always be remembered as the game with arguably the worst launch next to No Man's Sky. It was a bugfest and the console experience was so bad that refunds were provided from the developers themselves. But I'm not here to talk about the launch - instead I would like to share my personal experience after ~100 hours of playing and getting all available endings, entirely in patch 2.1 and right off the bat with Phantom Liberty (which I reviewed already).
Cyberpunk really shines in terms of presentation. The vibes are incredible, Night City nails the feeling of a dystopian and futuristic metropolis perfectly. You know, flashy neon lights and advertisements are plastered all over the city and the streets are always busy. Another thing that really helps the immersion here is the lighting. An often overlooked aspect, but it's probably the best ambient lighting I've ever seen in a game alongside Red Dead Redemption 2. Do yourself a favor and cruise through Night City on a rainy night, you'll see what I'm talking about. By the way, this is without Raytracing. RTX enabled is a whole different beast, but I didn't keep it on for long, because it was taking a serious toll on my frames and I'm a person who likes to enjoy games with a smooth framerate over graphical fidelity all day.
The main story is solid, albeit not very long. You could probably finish it under 20 hours in total if you're beelining the main quests and ignore the side content. Despite the short runtime, you'll find yourself in a lot of cool setpieces and get acquainted to many great characters, each with their own individual questline. I would definitely recommend playing those quests, since they're a lot more personal than the overarching narrative and really help understanding the struggles and personalities of V's friends better. Speaking of those friends, I think the fluff text messages you get every now and then are a great feature. Makes the world feel more alive and it's always nice to see characters being relevant outside of their own contained substories. Romance is also a neat little mechanic - I really like how CDPR provides extra text messages for your partner, so they ask about V's life every now and then. There's an unique quest where you can also hang out with them at your apartment and talk about stuff, this is repeatable, but unfortunately the dialogue repeats after the first time. Just use your imagination here and you're golden.
Cyberpunk's side content is mainly divided into two different mission types - gigs and side jobs. Gigs are one-time missions where you do a quick job for a fixer of choice, like breaking into an apartment to retrieve some data for a client. How you handle those missions is entirely up to you (unless there's an optional objective you'd like to complete), so you could opt for a stealthy approach or just shoot your way through the enemies. Combat in general is very diverse, you can have Mantis Blade implants inside your arms or blind enemies with hacks - there are so many possible builds. I went with a Netrunner/Gunslinger build, since not many games offer you the opportunity to weaken your opponents by just hacking them! And pistols just feel like the most comfy ranged option to me - a silenced one for stealth and another unsilenced one for loud combat. If you're still unsure on a build, I'd recommend testing some of the iconic weapons (basically the "legendary" weapons of this game), since they come with unique perks. There's a lot of them, so I'm sure some of them will appeal to you. Now, I didn't go in detail about the side jobs, but that's because they're more narrative-driven quests. Some of them feel like the Stranger quests in RDR2, while others have more complex tales to tell. So basically they are a great pastime if you're looking for more worldbuilding in Night City.
If you found yourself asking the whole time "But what about the bugs?", while reading this, then I'll gladly answer that for you. In my 97 hours of playtime I only had a single crash happen (right before writing this review ironically), but since the game autosaves often enough, it was a loss of like 3 minutes only. I haven't encountered a single game-breaking bug, just some small immersion-breakers every now and then, alongside two "real" bugs. This includes various items clipping into the hands of NPCs when they were supposed to put them away and NPCs in general teleporting on rooftops where they aren't supposed to be. The "real" bugs were my V glitching through a wall after a character crashed my car into that wall in a scripted cutscene (had to reload my save) and I've also had enemies walk through a closed garage door once - but that one was rather funny, despite being unfair. There's another problem I'd like to address, but I'm not entirely sure if it's a bug, so I'm not going to label it as one. It's related to quests starting through calls of certain characters. The game explicitly tells you "Wait a day until this character calls you back." and then sometime they just don't call at all, despite 24 hours having passed in-game. Worst offender was when I tried to start the follow-up mission to the companion mission "Off the Leash", the quest giver was supposed to call after one in-game day but it took me two real-time hours (after several virtual days passed already) for that character to call. For your own sanity I recommend doing other gigs or side jobs inbetween, because I'm very sure the calls will come on time if you don't just try to exploit the waiting feature to skip to those quests instantly. Try to let it play out naturally.
Are you a fan of the Edgerunners anime? Well, good news for you! The world of Cyberpunk 2077 also includes small nods to the series, like the graves of the deceased characters at the cemetery. There's also a side job where you can get David's iconic jacket and you can find Rebecca's famous shotgun out in the world too (if you remember the spot she left it in the anime).
The final point I'd like to address in this review is the soundtrack. (Yeah, there are other songs besides I Really Want To Stay At Your House.) While the OST in The Witcher 3 had a calmer, more comforting vibe, Cyberpunk's music fits the high octane combat accordingly, but some of the best tracks come from the sad and serious moments in the game. For car rides, the different radio stations allow you to listen to your music genre of choice. Speaking of the cars, I find it a lot more satisfying to drive to quest locations than to just quick travel there (which I regrettably did a lot in like the first 20 hours of my playthrough). It's just a lot more immersive and driving feels great if you have a car you like. (My personal favorite ride is the Outlaw, great speed and handles well.)
I have talked a lot about this game now. That's because I love it. So if you would ask me if Cyberpunk is worth it, I would definitely recommend you to pick up the base game on sale sometime and go for Phantom Liberty if you want to spend more time in this fantastic world. It's pretty much in a fixed state now and if what I described in this review seems interesting to you, why not give it a go? There were very few moments where I was actually bored, even the beginning is great and brings you pretty fast into the action (unlike a certain cowboy game I have named several times in this review already).
That's all I wanted to share - thanks for reading.
For many, Cyberpunk 2077 will always be remembered as the game with arguably the worst launch next to No Man's Sky. It was a bugfest and the console experience was so bad that refunds were provided from the developers themselves. But I'm not here to talk about the launch - instead I would like to share my personal experience after ~100 hours of playing and getting all available endings, entirely in patch 2.1 and right off the bat with Phantom Liberty (which I reviewed already).
Cyberpunk really shines in terms of presentation. The vibes are incredible, Night City nails the feeling of a dystopian and futuristic metropolis perfectly. You know, flashy neon lights and advertisements are plastered all over the city and the streets are always busy. Another thing that really helps the immersion here is the lighting. An often overlooked aspect, but it's probably the best ambient lighting I've ever seen in a game alongside Red Dead Redemption 2. Do yourself a favor and cruise through Night City on a rainy night, you'll see what I'm talking about. By the way, this is without Raytracing. RTX enabled is a whole different beast, but I didn't keep it on for long, because it was taking a serious toll on my frames and I'm a person who likes to enjoy games with a smooth framerate over graphical fidelity all day.
The main story is solid, albeit not very long. You could probably finish it under 20 hours in total if you're beelining the main quests and ignore the side content. Despite the short runtime, you'll find yourself in a lot of cool setpieces and get acquainted to many great characters, each with their own individual questline. I would definitely recommend playing those quests, since they're a lot more personal than the overarching narrative and really help understanding the struggles and personalities of V's friends better. Speaking of those friends, I think the fluff text messages you get every now and then are a great feature. Makes the world feel more alive and it's always nice to see characters being relevant outside of their own contained substories. Romance is also a neat little mechanic - I really like how CDPR provides extra text messages for your partner, so they ask about V's life every now and then. There's an unique quest where you can also hang out with them at your apartment and talk about stuff, this is repeatable, but unfortunately the dialogue repeats after the first time. Just use your imagination here and you're golden.
Cyberpunk's side content is mainly divided into two different mission types - gigs and side jobs. Gigs are one-time missions where you do a quick job for a fixer of choice, like breaking into an apartment to retrieve some data for a client. How you handle those missions is entirely up to you (unless there's an optional objective you'd like to complete), so you could opt for a stealthy approach or just shoot your way through the enemies. Combat in general is very diverse, you can have Mantis Blade implants inside your arms or blind enemies with hacks - there are so many possible builds. I went with a Netrunner/Gunslinger build, since not many games offer you the opportunity to weaken your opponents by just hacking them! And pistols just feel like the most comfy ranged option to me - a silenced one for stealth and another unsilenced one for loud combat. If you're still unsure on a build, I'd recommend testing some of the iconic weapons (basically the "legendary" weapons of this game), since they come with unique perks. There's a lot of them, so I'm sure some of them will appeal to you. Now, I didn't go in detail about the side jobs, but that's because they're more narrative-driven quests. Some of them feel like the Stranger quests in RDR2, while others have more complex tales to tell. So basically they are a great pastime if you're looking for more worldbuilding in Night City.
If you found yourself asking the whole time "But what about the bugs?", while reading this, then I'll gladly answer that for you. In my 97 hours of playtime I only had a single crash happen (right before writing this review ironically), but since the game autosaves often enough, it was a loss of like 3 minutes only. I haven't encountered a single game-breaking bug, just some small immersion-breakers every now and then, alongside two "real" bugs. This includes various items clipping into the hands of NPCs when they were supposed to put them away and NPCs in general teleporting on rooftops where they aren't supposed to be. The "real" bugs were my V glitching through a wall after a character crashed my car into that wall in a scripted cutscene (had to reload my save) and I've also had enemies walk through a closed garage door once - but that one was rather funny, despite being unfair. There's another problem I'd like to address, but I'm not entirely sure if it's a bug, so I'm not going to label it as one. It's related to quests starting through calls of certain characters. The game explicitly tells you "Wait a day until this character calls you back." and then sometime they just don't call at all, despite 24 hours having passed in-game. Worst offender was when I tried to start the follow-up mission to the companion mission "Off the Leash", the quest giver was supposed to call after one in-game day but it took me two real-time hours (after several virtual days passed already) for that character to call. For your own sanity I recommend doing other gigs or side jobs inbetween, because I'm very sure the calls will come on time if you don't just try to exploit the waiting feature to skip to those quests instantly. Try to let it play out naturally.
Are you a fan of the Edgerunners anime? Well, good news for you! The world of Cyberpunk 2077 also includes small nods to the series, like the graves of the deceased characters at the cemetery. There's also a side job where you can get David's iconic jacket and you can find Rebecca's famous shotgun out in the world too (if you remember the spot she left it in the anime).
The final point I'd like to address in this review is the soundtrack. (Yeah, there are other songs besides I Really Want To Stay At Your House.) While the OST in The Witcher 3 had a calmer, more comforting vibe, Cyberpunk's music fits the high octane combat accordingly, but some of the best tracks come from the sad and serious moments in the game. For car rides, the different radio stations allow you to listen to your music genre of choice. Speaking of the cars, I find it a lot more satisfying to drive to quest locations than to just quick travel there (which I regrettably did a lot in like the first 20 hours of my playthrough). It's just a lot more immersive and driving feels great if you have a car you like. (My personal favorite ride is the Outlaw, great speed and handles well.)
I have talked a lot about this game now. That's because I love it. So if you would ask me if Cyberpunk is worth it, I would definitely recommend you to pick up the base game on sale sometime and go for Phantom Liberty if you want to spend more time in this fantastic world. It's pretty much in a fixed state now and if what I described in this review seems interesting to you, why not give it a go? There were very few moments where I was actually bored, even the beginning is great and brings you pretty fast into the action (unlike a certain cowboy game I have named several times in this review already).
That's all I wanted to share - thanks for reading.