I played this at launch on Stadia (!) and now that they "fixed" the game I picked it up again on PS5 to see if I wanted Phantom Liberty.
Took me about 4 hours to come to the conclusion that, no, this game actually still sucks. You can change police AI all you want, but when a game is fundamentally mediocre, it will always be mediocre.
The real issues with this game is an identity crisis at its core. It's neither a satisfying RPG nor a chaotic GTA-style open world game. It fails at both. What it excels at is gunplay. Guns feel good, it's responsive and snappy. You can get a great arsenal of weapons. That is great, and when you are doing side quests and roaming around, the game is a simple joy.
One of my biggest gripes with open-world games is their reluctance to give you freedom. They promise it to you like a carrot on a string, but so often they will hide quest lines behind main-story progression gates or even lock out skill trees or abilities or what have you. That is an insane philosophy to me. So, colour me shocked when I decide, fine, I'll do some story missions just so I can get the ball rolling but I'm locked into mind-numbing conversation missions for hours on end. Almost the entirety of Act 1 is sitting on various couches listening to various plots and occasionally chiming in with dialogue options of no consequence. The writing is awful. It basically feels as though you got together with friends for some table-top Cyberpunk and your DM ran a story. At least then it's a bunch of friends just shooting the shit. This tries way too hard to be BLADE RUNNER to be let off the hook. This is just embarrassing to watch, and it's embarrassing to play. Literal hours go by where you just sit and listen to faux-tough-guy shit. The cut content is shoved in your face, my favourite being when your little spider-drone has to sneak through hotel rooms but rather than control the drone as is obviously intended, you are just the camera on the wall. You scan vents to tell it where to go. Riveting. Uh oh! A maid is in the way in this room! Catch your breath, player! Get that blood pressure down, we'll figure out this high-stakes problem! Scan that TV so they look the other way! Wow, that was close. What a thrill!
I installed The Witcher 3 again and wow, the difference is IMMEDIATE. That game doesn't even get going right away, but you immediately get put into the world, the dialogue is in a different league entirely and even the simple choice of shaking down the first guy you meet, or not, is the game communicating that it's going to be a game of player choice and agency. Cyberpunk is not that. Never was, and never will be.
Took me about 4 hours to come to the conclusion that, no, this game actually still sucks. You can change police AI all you want, but when a game is fundamentally mediocre, it will always be mediocre.
The real issues with this game is an identity crisis at its core. It's neither a satisfying RPG nor a chaotic GTA-style open world game. It fails at both. What it excels at is gunplay. Guns feel good, it's responsive and snappy. You can get a great arsenal of weapons. That is great, and when you are doing side quests and roaming around, the game is a simple joy.
One of my biggest gripes with open-world games is their reluctance to give you freedom. They promise it to you like a carrot on a string, but so often they will hide quest lines behind main-story progression gates or even lock out skill trees or abilities or what have you. That is an insane philosophy to me. So, colour me shocked when I decide, fine, I'll do some story missions just so I can get the ball rolling but I'm locked into mind-numbing conversation missions for hours on end. Almost the entirety of Act 1 is sitting on various couches listening to various plots and occasionally chiming in with dialogue options of no consequence. The writing is awful. It basically feels as though you got together with friends for some table-top Cyberpunk and your DM ran a story. At least then it's a bunch of friends just shooting the shit. This tries way too hard to be BLADE RUNNER to be let off the hook. This is just embarrassing to watch, and it's embarrassing to play. Literal hours go by where you just sit and listen to faux-tough-guy shit. The cut content is shoved in your face, my favourite being when your little spider-drone has to sneak through hotel rooms but rather than control the drone as is obviously intended, you are just the camera on the wall. You scan vents to tell it where to go. Riveting. Uh oh! A maid is in the way in this room! Catch your breath, player! Get that blood pressure down, we'll figure out this high-stakes problem! Scan that TV so they look the other way! Wow, that was close. What a thrill!
I installed The Witcher 3 again and wow, the difference is IMMEDIATE. That game doesn't even get going right away, but you immediately get put into the world, the dialogue is in a different league entirely and even the simple choice of shaking down the first guy you meet, or not, is the game communicating that it's going to be a game of player choice and agency. Cyberpunk is not that. Never was, and never will be.