Absolutely batshit from the word go and keeps up that insane energy for almost 10 hours. Controls like a dream, buttery smooth and completely effortless to pull off cool shit. Super easy to pick up and play, but it's got layers and layers of depth for those that want it. Tons of fun gimmicks and experimental levels. Gorgeous art direction, especially on low resolutions. Music is a bop. Dopamine levels off the charts.

It's basically a shitpost and it somehow stands toe to toe with Mario. Goddamn.

Finished it months ago but never logged it cause I wanted to finish the base game again first... and then I got distracted with other stuff. As per usual.

God this is good. It's buggy, and unpolished, and starring an Idris Elba who is clearly just here for the paycheck, but it's still bloody good. Easily the best piece of the cyberpunk pie by a gargantuan mile (2 miles). CD Projekt Red can make some very good stuff when they put their mind to it (and aren't forced to release something 3 years early), and this is like a highlight reel of all the things they're best at. Impeccable writing, world-building and atmosphere paired with some of the best mission design in the business. The final quest of this is an all timer.

Insanely good looking game, in 2017 and even today. Absolutely beautiful sound design too, and cutscene direction, and performances, every aspect of the presentation is stellar! 20 people made this and it stands right alongside God of War or Half Life: Alyx, it's fucking ridiculous.

I really hope the sequel does some more interesting stuff on the gameplay side to keep it interesting though. There's some flashes of fun design sprinkled throughout this (the fire maze! the beast!) but it's mostly just combat followed by puzzle followed by combat followed by puzzle. Understandable given the minuscule team size (AGAIN, 20 PEOPLE!), but I really hope that Microsoft budget gives them the juice to make the next one super fucking gorgeous AND super fucking fun.

Ignoring the elephant in the room for just a second (and let me tell ya, that elephant is one morbidly obese bugger), this actually does a lot of really cool things that I like a lot. Love the roundabouts, the upgradable buildings, the free terraforming, the new progression system, the new electricity and water system, the train yard, etc, I could just keep going. It feels like a proper sequel instead of what I was worried it was going to be: the same game with a 2 on the end. It plays a little differently; it's much slower paced and more focused on the smaller details than before. It's weirdly stripped back in certain aspects (where's all the landmarks, come on lads!) but for the most part it's improved for the better.

BUT, and jesus is that "but" doing a lot of heavy lifting: it's blatantly not finished yet. Not only is buggy, visually ugly and extremely unpolished (those tutorials are dreadful, chirper is not remotely helpful), it also runs like shit. For a game that often looks dramatically worse than the original, I don't really get how they managed to get it running this atrociously. But, y'know, paradox needed a big win for the quarterly earnings, so screw it, we'll fix it in a year, or two, or three.