as a damn good game and could have been in my top 10 of the year if it wasn't full of so many bugs that at points almost halted my progress and at other points completely ruined the immersion the game was trying to give.
I'm just gonna list off each part of the game give my thoughts on each one and give it a number.

The Open World: while it's smaller then GTA 5's map and even GTA SA it still feels super dense and alive with all the detail everything, if it wasn't for the immersion-breaking bugs I'd say Night City would have been the most immersion open worlds I would have ever played. 9/10

The Gameplay: The gameplay is as smooth as butter. The gunplay is fast and heavy with every shot having its own weight to it.
The Melee breaks the game but is still super fun to use.
The Driving to me feels like a mix of both GTA 5 and GTA 4, it has that realistic physics of GTA 4 but has the better handling of GTA 5 making it pretty good but not great.
Overall the Gameplay was hands down the best part of this game. 10/10
The RPG Elements: The upgrade tree while interesting at first falls a bit flat by the end.
The Crafting system is borderline useless and I barely even used it.
Parts of the game depended on wither or not you have upgraded one specific trait like passing a speech test or using force to open a door feels very tacked on almost like they said "well it's an RPG so we need stuff like this because it's not an RPG without this stuff" it's just very meh.
Overall the game plays better as an open-world action game rather than an RPG 4/10

Story: I found the story to be pretty good, but it's not the best story I've seen. My main problem would be the lack of agency the game gives you, so at some point in the game Johnny Silverhand a dead rocker/terrorist is slowly taking over your body and killing you at the same time and the doctor says you only have 2 weeks to live. but since it's an open-world game the game lets me take my sweet time with everything so by the time I make it to the third act I realized "Oh yeah...... I'm gonna die soon.......well shit".
While the writing was good and the performances are pretty great I didn't really have all that much interest in the story.
It's nothing awful but nothing that will blow you away. 6/10
Writing: The writing is pretty good at times; it's not amazing and it's not Hideo Kojima levels of weird, it's just pretty good I don't really have much to say about it. 7/10

Characters: Unlike the story where I didn't care all that much I feel the exact opposite with the Characters.
Almost every character feels super fleshed out and believable thanks to their performances.
I felt genuinely invested in these characters' struggles along with their wants and needs.
I did find some character's performances to feel a little off Keanu Reeves being one of them, he's not awful like post-Matrix but it's more like he's trying to channel Pre Matrix and is not doing a very good job.
While there are some meh characters, it's still a really damn good roster and I'd love to see these characters in a squeal or maybe that TV show that's probably never coming out. 9/10

The Visuals: This is probably the best-looking game I've ever played, I say probably because the game is really poorly optimized so at times my nice smooth 60 FPS can drop to the chunky '40s at points.
The models of the NPCs look just amazing the skin textures look fantastic right down to the smallest minor detail.
I really admire the art direction in this as well. Any average schmo could just look at a screenshot and say something like "Oh it's just like Blade Runner", and in some way that is true but when you can also see influences from other sources of media like Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and so many other versions of Cyberpunk that help give the game it's own unique version in the Cyberpunk genre.
While I would prefer to have the game, say at 60 FPS it still doesn't stop me from being amazed at how great the models look and how fantastic the art direction is. 9/10

The Music: I'm not a music guy, so I feel like I'm not in the position to critique this thoroughly, but when I found most of the music in this game to be fucking great that must mean it's doing something right 10/10.

Overall I wanna give this game a 9 given how much fun I had with the game but taking the bugs into account I have to give it an 8
Final Rating 8/10

Reviewed on Dec 21, 2020


5 Comments


I feel CDPR's problem in writing stems from their constant need to make everything feel like it has an immediate deadline while encouraging the player to explore and complete side activities. Witcher 3 had this core issue for me, that while monster hunting makes sense for Geralt, the story always insists on the need to reach Ciri before its too late, meaning that monster hunting makes little sense in the context. The same issue is here, with the game revolving around a merc, who would be doing various types of activities, but you can get a call from three different people in one day telling you to meet them that evening. It creates a disconnect between the world and the story. So while I feel the story is very good, and the game is excellent, in spite of the few bugs I've had, this is my main criticism. I find the story would work better in a linear game, while everything else, including the side quests and character story arcs are great for an open-world environment.

3 years ago

@LovelyLudwigVan
I agree with your statement, while I have not played The Witcher 3 I'll take your word on how the story is told.

2 years ago

i decided to finally get this for 8 dollars, i wonder how this will go lol

2 years ago

@Nancyfly
If you're playing it on a base PS4 all I'll say is good luck because it's still not that great.

2 years ago

Honestly its def got issues but its surprisingly not that bad so far. Hopefully the ps5 ver comes out by the time I finally get a ps5 lol