its release debacle forever means that any praise towards this game always comes with an asterisk.

looking past that asterisk, the game's genuinely filled to the brim with style. top of the line animations even on the most obscure piece of dialogue echoes the general ambition of the game. some parts match that ambition and some don't but I'm impressed at the attempt regardless. very rarely does your immersion break here but the mission structure does give way to situations where a main job requires a level of urgency yet the player could easily spend hours doing side jobs and gigs before ever reaching back to that urgent task. despite this the narrative is written strongly enough that you can ignore this problem and still be immersed and into it when you get back hours later. I think that speaks to the strength of the writing here. the game's first and final acts are incredible but I found myself a little uninterested in some of the middle parts. the side jobs vary a lot. some are really interesting and detailed while some others are simple fetch quests that take up too much time for what they are. gigs are the boring parts of the game. they are copy pasted jobs with different context meant to fill the map with things to do. sometimes they do give you access to a special weapon or some other reward but after doing a few, I decided to not do the rest.

with update 2.0 the game has streamlined levelling up and combat. its fun to build a particular playstyle with thoughtful levelling up and skill selection, but the game doesn't allow or offer any methods for players to reset their skill trees so they can experiment different ideas and eventually find what suits them. the game gives you 1 reset and that's it. once I was locked into my katana/pistol build there was no way for me to experiment with other playstyles like netrunner or shotgunner. there should have been provided some way to reset stats maybe through eddies (the in-game currency) or perhaps through some rare chip or item (could even make it a reward for gigs further incentivizing playing them). It's a simple fix which I hope they can add in some future update

The only incentive to replay cyberpunk would be to replay it with a different build and choose a different ending but I personally don't see myself coming back to this one due to how long some things take which would definitely annoy me the second time around. I would know what to do and where to go but the game wouldn't allow me to just skip the tedium.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with cyberpunk. It's a very good game with a lot of flaws but I love it regardless. very much excited for whatever they do in this world next.