I liked this a lot more than Touhou Luna Nights. I feel like this game’s gimmick is more fleshed out than the other’s, and getting multiple weapons over the course of the game instead of always having the same basic attack that for some reason also drains your MP bar was a much welcome change. I just liked the environments here more too. The pixel art is still incredibly gorgeous and the aesthetics of the levels appealed to me more. Overall this is just much more fleshed out Metroidvania than Luna Nights.

There’s something really special here. The gameplay is alright. It’s really simple but is also frenetic and breezy enough to be enjoyable. But the real draw here is the characters and the writing. This game is impeccably written and acted. The way the team grows together and becomes a family by the end is so well done. This is one of those adaptations where you can feel the writers’ love for the source material. I’m not gonna act like I know a lot about the comics, and I haven’t seen the movies because fuck Chris Pratt, but even as someone with little to no background with this series I absolutely loved these characters.

gimme a new deus ex tho

The best one of these they’ve made. It’s the only one so far that doesn’t have a “but”. It doesn’t have the problem of most of these where there are specific areas that just bring down the whole experience. Even the worst areas aren’t bad enough that they become overly annoying.

Having an overarching story actually unfolding around you is also nice because it made me more invested in exploring and talking to NPCs. It’s one of the best open worlds I’ve ever seen, probably even the best. The sheer amount of things you can do make it feel more meaningful than similar worlds like BOTW.

Overall, while there are a couple bosses I’m not huge on and a couple areas that annoyed the hell out of me, none of it was bad enough to hurt my enjoyment of the game.

Cyberpunk’s writing is incredible. I found myself getting really attached to basically all of the characters. V and Johnny’s dynamic is great. I’m surprised how well they used Keanu here, he plays the standoffish anarchistic rocker really well. Jackie is also another highlight, they actually managed to get me really attached to him, so much so that I teared up at the E3 trailer moment. The entire voice cast is great and they do a stellar job of bringing the writing to life, even if the slang can be a bit much to get used to.

Night City feels alive and it’s a wonder to behold. The amount of detail in every corner is astonishing and it does wonders for the atmosphere. More games need to let me walk down neon soaked streets at night in the rain. Now that it’s on consoles that can handle it, it looks immaculate and runs really well too.

The gameplay is also better than I was expecting. The guns themselves feel pretty good and the variety in weapons is also good. The game honestly feels more like the modern Deus Ex games than a standard open world game. It feels like if you took Mankind Divided’s Prague and spread it over an entire city. The driving is the only part I’d call rough, but it’s not bad enough to bring down the overall experience for me.

Speaking of things that are rough, I didn’t run into that many bugs. Of course I had a few and a couple required reloading a save, but it didn’t happen often enough over my 50 hours with the game that it became a problem.

I didn’t go into Cyberpunk expecting too much, but I came out genuinely in love with it. I spent literally 20 hours just doing side quests at the end of the game just so I didn’t have to finish the story and have it be over.

I really liked the 2013 Shadow Warrior reboot, but 2 is just an all around worse game. That’s not to say it’s bad because it really isn’t, it’s just not as good as it should be. The switch to a looter-shooter with only like 5 different levels that every mission in the game takes place in wasn’t entirely welcome but less jarring than I thought it’d be. The guns feel pretty good and you can traverse those levels in some really fun ways once you figure out the trick to breaking this game over your knee. The story was a significant step down from the last game with every character being a downgrade but there’s glimpses of what this could have been had they been able to pull it off. Overall it was a fun time and would definitely be a lot of fun with friends, just not as good as it should have been.

There are a lot of things in this game that hold up surprisingly well, but overall I think it’s just an alright shooter that was incredibly influential. Most of the guns don’t feel very good but the ones that do (shotgun) kick ass. The updated visuals look really nice and playing on Series X at a locked 60fps made it feel pretty alright. The cover system honestly still works really well and is maybe the aspect that holds up the best. The thing that surprised me the most going back was how you can see these random bits of an interesting world in the background but they never really go in depth with it like they probably should’ve, and the story and character writing is honestly really bad. None of the characters were likable.