An enthralling introduction and evolution of the CRPG genre that, unfortunately, fumbles at the goal line with a borderline unfinished final act, a steady increase in performance issues, and an Irish exit of an epilogue.

And yet, despite its blemishes, it’s genuinely one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had the pleasure of partaking in. It’s great for every reason you’ve heard before, particularly in Larian Studios’ efforts to emphasize player freedom and creativity. Hats off to the voice actors, who give unprecedented life to your digital companions, setting a new standard for vocal performances in gaming, and the audio department, whose luscious and breathtaking score and foley work bring the lands of Faerûn to life.

It’s everything you’ve heard of and more but, much like a DnD campaign that’s gone on a little too long, at some point, it’s obvious that everyone just wants to go home.

“Truth is… the game was rigged from the start.”

Cyberpunk 2077 is as wide as an ocean, but as deep as a puddle. Except this puddle isn’t only shallow; it’s corroded, maligned and anatomically faulty.

After 16 hours of play and 17 crashes later on my PlayStation 5, I simply cannot put up with the current state of the game. When paying $60 for a game, the bare minimum I expect is for the product to run on a system it’s been marketed on. The game is unfinished, only holding itself together off of the backs of CD Projekt Red’s overworked staff.

It’s impossible to talk about Cyberpunk 2077 without addressing its marketing hype. Since April, I couldn’t go a single commercial break without seeing Keanu Reeves ask one question, “In 2077, what makes someone a criminal?” It’s a slick piece of marketing. Brilliantly lit shots of the player character racking up some mayhem are interlaced with shots of Keanu Reeves hopping into a sports car. It looks cool, it looks fun, it looks like something you need to have.

Re-watching the ad after playing the game, I found that only three shots are actual gameplay footage. The rest of the CGI is what I hoped I’d be able to do, but can’t. Unlike what’s featured in the ad, you can’t swiftly slide on the roof of a car into cover. Damaging limbs with your katana doesn’t phase the enemy. You can’t even shoot a gun when you’re driving.

Comparing the E3 footage of a product to the product on release is nothing out of the ordinary. Sometimes the comparison is straight up laughable, i.e. a Watch Dogs, Anthem or The Division. Sometimes it’s laughable that people are mad in the first place, like Spider-Man’s “puddlegate.” Cyberpunk 2077 falls in line with the former. Bustling streets are devoid of pedestrians, and when there are pedestrians they’re likely glitched halfway into the ground or t-posing in an adjacent corner. There are barely any vehicles about, the lighting is reminiscent of a PS3 port of a PS4 game and the texture quality leaves a lot to be desired.

Why this game is as graphically demanding as it is ponders me. I played Red Dead Redemption 2 on a DVR Xbox One and I never experienced a crash. I played The Last of Us Part 2 on the original fat PS4 and it ran swimmingly. Cyberpunk 2077 does not look any better than these games, yet it chugs along like an out-of-his-prime athlete who’s trying to prove he’s still got it.

On the PS5, Cyberpunk 2077 hits 60 fps in most areas. However, the game doesn’t seem to be able to handle the ability to sprint. Sprinting from one block to another would either make the game crash or load in PS2-quality textures for several seconds before the up-ressed textures are plopped in.

The only element holding the allure of Night City together is the art direction and sound design. This soundtrack is absolutely killer. From thumping and throttling bass to pristine electro-pop, Cyberpunk 2077 has it all. It’s insane to think about the amount of big name artists providing new songs to the game. A$AP Rocky, Run The Jewels, Grimes and more. These songs keep the spirit of Night City alive, so it’s a real shame that you’ll never know who is performing each track. Cyberpunk 2077 does not showcase the names of any song during gameplay. When changing radio stations, you will have no clue what artist is performing each song and you won’t even know the song title. The only way to figure it out is to either scavenge YouTube or Spotify. GTA did this in the 90s, why can’t Cyberpunk 2077 do it in 2020?

UI decisions only get progressively more confusing. Even after attaining the cybernetic upgrade allowing you to see your ammo count (which is a really odd thing you have to earn), I had numerous glitches which didn’t allow me to see what ammo I had in my holster. When walking along the streets of Night City, subtitles for NPCs are unreadable. Changing the subtitle scaling does nothing to suffice this. I experienced another glitch where my health would not appear until a complete game restart.

These terrible UI decisions rear their ugly head in inventory management. While you are able to sort between long range and melee weapons, you are unable to sort between the various classifications of these weapons. What if I only wanted to see the pistols in my inventory? Tough luck. Want to lock a favorite item? Can’t. Want to sort armor value? Can’t. What about a warning when you’re storing an equipped item? Na-da. What about bulk marking items for sale? Prepare to press that triangle button because you can’t. You can’t even turn off the “compare weapons” function.

Figuring out what any of these items do is a problem in its own right. Cyberpunk 2077 introduces itself terribly. No matter what life path you choose at the beginning, you will always do the same opening mission. In fact, through my 16 hours of play, the life choice has not affected anything other than flavor text and romance options. For a game promising endless possibilities, it’s a real low blow to those wishing to partake in additional replays.

The first six hours of Cyberpunk 2077 are convoluted and overwhelming. When you exit from your apartment and step foot in Night City, your senses are immediately flooded with map markers. Exclamation points, vehicles, crimes, you name it. While you are intended to pursue the main story missions until you explore these parts, the game doesn’t stop you from getting lost inside the mess of markers. Cyberpunk 2077 takes the Ubisoft approach to open world design, pounding the player with goals and tasks to accomplish in order to try to attain a feedback loop of quest-kill-reward. While games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Spider-Man, Horizon: Zero Dawn and hell even GTA 5 have moved beyond flooding the senses, Cyberpunk 2077 takes a massive step back.

The means through progressing Night City are also a mess. Driving is terrible. Each vehicle feels like you are driving on ice, slipping and sliding and making imprecise turns until you reach your destination. I feel as if I have no control. Braking is also a lost cause, as slamming the breaks will still cause your car to slide plenty of meters before a full stop. Calling your car to your location is also hit or miss. Sometimes the vehicle arrives without an issue in five seconds. Sometimes it gets stuck on the bridge above you. Sometimes your vehicle phases other cars out of existence in order to reach you. Sometimes it bursts under a car, sending the other vehicle flying to hyperspace.

When you arrive at your destination and proceed with combat, it’s an overall mediocre experience. Enemy AI is completely brain dead with Skyrim bandit level of awareness if you choose to sneak. Enemies are also bullet spongey as hell, sometimes standing out in the open while you nail shot after shot at their unprotected head. Shooting doesn’t feel like it has weight and neither does melee combat. Melee combat is a particularly awkward experience as it’s hard to tell at what range I am hitting the enemy. Sometimes I feel like I’m a proper distance away and the enemy lands a punching blow, other times it’s vice versa. Combat works and isn’t necessarily broken, but there is little to no skill involved. It is simply a duel over who has the higher DPS.

The loot system is also complete shite. You are given way too many things that don’t matter. What’s the purpose of collecting junk? Why can’t I use any of it? Why can I collect vinyls but not get new music tracks from them? You can never get attached to your weapon or clothes choices since DPS reigns supreme.

The skill trees are also largely irrelevant, as the only thing that matters in combat is DPS. The only benefits of skill trees seem to be more dialogue options (which still are essentially flavor text), unlocking doors and breaking into cars. Perk points essentially only give marginal percentage boosts. Weapon mods are also largely irrelevant as suppressors seem to do nothing and changing your sight only brings marginal benefits.

I’ve gone this far without even mentioning the story, which is just OK. The big draw to the game is obviously Keanu, but his performance is fairly lackluster. Reeves’ strength as an actor comes from his stunt-work and monotone voice which works for characters like Neo and John Wick. However, Johnny Silverhand is supposed to be this bodacious and otherworldly presence with endless charisma. Reeves’ doesn’t deliver that. He’s far more “aging rocker” than he is “uncanned ball of chaos,” which I believe CD Projekt Red was shooting for.

While the story has many interesting beats to follow and intrigue abound, it simply shoves too much information at one time. It’s hard to get attached to a character when in the same scene, the game tries to introduce another. After 16 hours, I feel like I’ve progressed nowhere.

Everything just feels wrong. Driving feels wrong, combat feels wrong, exploration feels wrong, mission structure feels wrong, looting feels wrong, it graphically looks unfinished, characters don’t move correctly which creates an “uncanny valley” effect.

The game advertised everything you could do, but in reality your options are cut woefully short. Why can’t I customize V’s appearance after character creation? Why is there no body slider for V? Why can’t I smoke and get plastered? Why can’t I see my character outside of mirrors and third person driving? Why do the police teleport to me when I tap a person with my car when driving? Why am I able to rob people without them caring? Why are there no trains? Why do crowds not react when I’m standing butt naked in downtown Night City? Why are there no garages to store my vehicles? Why can’t I customize my apartment? What’s the point of the apartment? Why can’t I access braindance for anything other than story missions? Why, no matter what I choose, is V the same character from when I started to when I finished?

And holy shit the bugs. V has been completely naked for most of my playthrough on my end. Even when she’s not in the nude, her breasts pop through her clothes. Most recently, she has lost her hair. My first minute of the game I had a t-posing citizen. During the first car chase, my camera bugged so I could see my headless malformed character shooting down enemies with no arms and a slug-like body. At random moments the game will not have NPCs move their mouths for dialogue. Every major story mission cutscene I’ve had a visual bug which takes me out of the experience. Keanu has swapped poses mid sentence and in the most emotional scene with Jackie, his model got swapped for an assault rifle. For an hour of playtime, my character was completely invulnerable. Even after the 1.04 hotfix, nothing regarding performance has fundamentally changed. I am crashing just as often and experiencing just as many bugs as when I began.

So after 16 hours, I am done. The game is too unstable to play in sessions longer than an hour, visual bugs have ruined my experience, the mission structure is outdated, gunplay is weak and melee is weaker, there is too much happening in the story to get me invested, none of my choices matter leaving me not attached to my own character, AI is brain dead and I am not having fun.

Cyberpunk 2077 was marketed to be everything that it’s not. It is not the evolution of GTA open world structure, it is an Ubisoft-esque experience with light RPG elements. At its best, Cyberpunk 2077 is average, but is that an experience you’ve been waiting nine years for?

Wait until it is patched, if it ever is.

I rated this game as a 3.5/5 a week after release, but after playing online... yeesh. 2K21 next-gen has kind of been rejected by the hardcore community the same way Call of Duty: Ghosts was rejected in favor of BLOPS II.

Let's start with some positives. The City is very visually appealing and a welcome change from the copy-pasted "Neighborhood" from the past couple of 2K releases. Graphically, the jersey materials, shading and lighting is very impressive. Skin tones are massively improved, making the player models look even better than they already were. It's a visual marvel.

Other than that... this game is busted. MyTeam and MyCareer are more monetized than ever. On MyCareer, a single game will probably only net you enough VC for a SINGLE ATTRIBUTE UPGRADE. In MyTeam, the introduction of seasons has ruined a mode which has been feasible to play no-money-spent in past years. Seasons is a battle pass-esque model, but unlike most battle passes in games like COD and Desitny, 2K seasons awards game-breaking cards the higher and higher you level up. You can get more XP by scoring with new cards which will cost you real world money to acquire. The servers are booty cheeks, The City is a pretty but over glorified commercial, the Curry slide and fadeaway shots are broken beyond belief, the 6'7" demigod build has completely ruined pickup games and I have never seen as many cheaters using the CronusMax on a game since Warzone.

One day I'll get out of this abusive relationship.