Cyberpunk was on my radar for quite some time. I bought it soon after it launched on the Xbox One S, and, well, you know the rest. Poor performance, bugs galore, et. al.. I didn't get any further in the story than a bit after the prologue missions. On that playthrough, I did a Street Kid start. Now, three years later, I came back to Cyberpunk but on the PS5 as it was on sale. I heard so many good things; that the game had gone under a complete 180 from launch and it had now become one of the greatest video games of all time, with no faults.
Now, to tell you the truth, this game has come a long, LONG way from when it launched. But it still has a way to go. I may pick up and play Phantom Liberty when that comes out as I've heard it's going to be essentially a rewriting of the game, but come on CDPR. You pushed your devs to release the game in such a buggy mess, and they've spent the last few years trying to fix it. But it's still not perfect. This was the first game on PS5 that I played that had me encounter more than one crash. As a matter of fact, I think it happened no less than 20 times. As well, the AI can still be caught doing the occasional goofy actions or T-Pose, Missions sometimes bug out and you are caught frantically trying to get someone to call you (this happened to me with Kerry Eurodyne's final few quests), and vehicular controls and general physics still feel a bit clunky. Add on top of that the popping assets/objects, sometimes seemingly empty streets, and scrapped systems that would have added a lot more depth to the game, and you get a product that still has a lot of issues. But, thankfully, that's all the mainly negative things I have to say about the game. I had never played a CDPR game before this, but after playing I can verify that they truly are the best at making interesting side quests and characters. I had a lot of fun with this game; here's my thoughts on it.


Story: 9.5 / 10. I have a lot of thoughts on the story. I love the different life paths idea (although I do wish there was a little bit more done with it), and how the three "main" endings kind of link to those (Corpo with Hanako, Nomad with Panam, and Street Kid with Rogue). It's by far one of the most unique, complex concepts for a story I've ever come across; you have a literal Terrorist in your brain that had been essentially in limbo for the past 50 years, and he is unwillingly taking over your body. It's a story about saving yourself but also making meaningful connections.

I love the way that you can kind of make your own story depending on your different beginnings and endings; for example, my V was initially a Corpo scum. As he realized and tried to stop himself from dying, he fell in love with the freedom of Panam and the Aldecaldos. He realized that the city was nothing but hell, a cesspit of greedy corporations and people in it for themselves; that was my first ending, where I found V grew the most. I remember physically thinking "Yeah. F--- you Night City" as we were leaving. It was like ridding V of a parasite. It was freeing. I found this to be the true ending, with the most hope behind it.

Then I did (what I think is) the most tragic ending, where you go with the Aldecaldos and let Johnny take your body; this doesn't really make too much sense story-wise, as so many Nomads died for V to get to Mikoshi, just to have him give up. You get to see a man defeated by the corporations, giving a very mentally-grown Johnny one more chance at life. This was my favorite of the endings as you could see Johnny leaving Night City and turning a new leaf, showing what him and V really did for each other.

Then I did the suicide ending, and man. It was just like giving Johnny your body but worse. V really gave up here. Night City beat him. An ex-corpo realizes that there is no way out for him, and the house always wins. Night City drained him of hope. He died insignificantly.

Then it was the Rogue ending, which I liked the least. I enjoyed giving Johnny control and letting him have the decision to take V's body, but if you let the Corpo V have his body back, it doesn't make much sense to me; I can't see my V, after all he had been through, wanting to stay in the Cesspool of Night City to become a top dog. I can easily see it instead for both the Street Kid and Nomad origins, but not the Corpo.

Then, the hilarious hidden Don't Fear the Reaper ending. Just a guy walks up and shreds into Arasaka Tower. An ex-employee, at that. Finally sticking it to his company and all the corporations of night city for that matter. If V lives through this ending, it's goofy. If he dies, its a tragic last stand.

Finally came the Hanako ending, which I was indescisive on but I liked story-wise. It essentially indicated that my Corpo V went back to his roots and hadn't really grown at all; the corp still won in the end, as I chose to have him give up his body for immortality. This V was cared only about himself and didn't learn anything from Johnny and his journey. I couldn't see my V caring about people in this ending because he made such a stupid decision to work with Arasaka again, so, I just went full on role-playing V as a dum-dum narcissist. I couldn't see him going back down to spend the rest of his days on Earth. It didn't make sense to me. The only thing good about the ending was that it seemed to be the "happiest" for all the side characters in the epilogue; Takemura isn't pissed and you leave Panam and Judy both on good terms (which again, my V romanced Panam).

If you do different lifepaths you can come up with even more story beats of your own, which I think is great.
I found the game a bit nihlistic, but I believe anything Cyberpunk-like is (Johnny says it best: "Wrong City, Wrong People". There are no truly happy endings for V) and it was better off that way. I love that there isn't an ending that has every side character coming out on top in the credits/epilogue scene; someone always gets screwed over by V, or heartbroken. It's bittersweet. Especially with Takemura if you save him.


Characters: 9 / 10. They did a great job making each of these characters feel human. They went above and beyond to make things feel relatable; I especially find this in Takemura's terrible texting abilities which remind me of my father. He sends texts by accident, and even at one point accidentally sends a selfie. What's funny about this is V doesn't even address it at this point, knowing Takemura is so non tech-savvy. It's little things like this that make the characters feel so real; people text you at random. especially Judy and Panam long after you complete their storylines. Even Meredith Stout does it, regretfully. All characters have their own distinct personalities. Male V's voice actor gives a powerful and actually believable performance that I haven't seen since the God of War and Red Dead Series. I remember picking up Skippy the gun and hearing V chuckle while asking what he was doing; that minor detail adds so much life to V's character, it's great.

Even side characters can leave you thinking. The standout one to me is Joshua the murderer, a spine-chilling individual which turned to God after killing many with no remorse. You could see even though he was a bad person, that he was seeking forgiveness. At first (meaning before the Crucifixion), I was rude to him and demeaning. But seeing him then want nothing but V to be beside him for his death made me feel bad for him. While I refused to be the one to nail him to the cross, I stood next to him. God, that quest made me hate the spineless Corpos and cops even more, as the girl (who I think's name is Julia) seemingly only cared about Joshua as an object. That this Crucifixion would be a "big hit".
That one example of a pretty insignificant side quest shows the writing talent and attention to detail CDPR had on this game.

Last thing I'll say about the characters in this game; why I think V's true lover is Panam. Johnny himself says that he likes her. As the two of them slowly merge into one person, one personality, they both see more eye to eye. V would be interested in a hot-headed person like Panam. He would be up to that challenge. I found that their personalities definitely complimented each other much more than Judy's matched him. I found Judy was a great "female friend" that we don't get to see much of in gaming anymore.


Combat: 8 / 10. I played through the game initially thinking I would be a stealthy blade-wielder that threw knifes at his enemies from the safety of stealth. After playing for a bit I became a more stealth-handgun build, using the Overture revolver with a silencer (mainly because I wanted to get the revolver related trophies). But I then finally decided on being a sneaky Netrunner, disposing of enemies with one click of a button. This was pretty fun, and my final loadout in the game was a silenced sniper (given by Panam), a silenced Overture, a Monowire, Skippy every now and again, and an incredibly offensive Cyberdeck with max intelligence and quickhack skill put into it. My favorite quickhack was easily Short Circuit, as it almost always one shot incapacitated enemies in my path from a range, silently. I loved going into a camera network of an enemy camp and completely wiping out a whole base without stepping foot into it. Along with Short Circuit I used System Reset, Suicide, and Ping the most.

I absolutely love that I basically only scratched 25% of this game's combat system. It definitely ups the replayability of the game, as next time I could be a big cybernetic brute; a ninja; a smart-weapon connoisseur; a heavy weapon rampager; or a plain-old AR and SMG type guy. The Ripperdocs and cyberware upgrades add so much personality to your specific build as well, and it was an excellent addition to the game.


Gameplay/Content: 8 / 10. I love the moral quandaries you come across in this game's quests. And don't worry, there's a LOT of quests. enough that you won't ever run out of things to do in a normal, non-completionist playthrough. There's even a fantastic anime, Cyberpunk Edgerunners, based on this game! Like come on. You can't ask for much more for a TV adaptation than the Anime provides, but I won't get into that here. There are numerous "fixers" that send you interesting gigs that I'd say are far better than radiant quests, cool things you can stumble upon in the open world, and meaningful side content that actually effects the game's endings and gives depth to fellow characters. A great job they did, but it can be a bit overwhelming at times (see Problems for more information).


World: 8.5 / 10. This world absolutely feels alive, with the only exception being the lack of traffic on highways and roads at times. The city streets are often bustling and filled with pedestrians, there is often chatter and noise throughout the city, and each district feels incredibly unique. There is verticality to many of the buildings, and multiple interiors that you can go into and explore. The different gangs have their own distinct looks. CDPR did a great job of capturing a beautifully ugly Cyberpunk city; perhaps the best one I've seen in gaming. I'd argue that it is easily better than that of GTA V's.


Traversal: 7.5 / 10. It's pretty basic, not much more to it. I'm a fan of the different cars you can get and the fast travel system is a nice addition that didn't seem like a crutch, as it was fun to drive around and see the sights (unlike HZD and Ghost of Tsushima where it was just a slog and boring to move around). The cybernetic leg upgrades are a great touch as well (I went for the double jump legs)! You never feel like you're going too slow in this game, whether it be driving, walking, or climbing. I wish I depended on the mini-map a bit less and focused on the sights around me instead. Not paying attention to it made it easy to get lost in the beautiful and twisted city.


Problems: Aside from the many bugs I mentioned at the beginning, I only have two small problems with Cyberpunk still;
First up, it's a completionist's nightmare. I feel like they could have scrapped the NCPD scanner system as a whole, as I found myself running through both those and the Gigs in districts at rapid speed. There was simply too much of this content to really enjoy without getting a sense of repetitiveness to it; there's over 150 of these NCPD scans in the game, and more than 50 gigs! There's not a need for that many, and it made it feel like no more than checking a box when doing them. If there were only Gigs from fixers and no scanner stuff, I believe it would have held my interest a lot more, and I would have read into the lore of each small instead of skipping through them after a certain point because of how much stuff there was to do in a district. The only problem with this is that it would definitely make the world feel less lively, so I'm alright with them keeping it in for immersion but kind of damning the completionists in the process.
Secondly, and this is a small one, they kind of spoiled the entire first act with the trailers for the game (which were graphically fantastic, by the way). Don't do this again, please!


Favorite Part: Breaking down as V in Mikoshi with Johnny supporting you // Listening to Kerry play guitar on the yacht.
Least Favorite Part: Going back to complete all the endings; it was kind of a slog, and by the time I did Hanako's I felt too burnt out to be totally engaged.


All in all, thanks Cyberpunk. You made me think more than any other game I've played in a long time. I don't know if I've ever wrote, theorized or thought so much about a video game after completing it as I have this one. I think I'll try to come back for Phantom Liberty!