This is a frustrating game. It's frustrating because it's on the damn steps of being a masterpiece.
The good:
- This game has a jaw-dropping open world game, Night City is wonderful and incredibly designed, I've never seen a game with such verticality, this feels like a real place in a sense I had never experienced before.
- (Main) Characters are super interesting and behave like real people. Not only this has amazing voice acting, but character animations are a work of art. Each character is filled with small details that make them seem real; a character talking about something painful? they may be shaking their leg for a few seconds while showing a very realistic face expression. It's mesmerizing how GREAT these animations are.
- Main storylines are absolutely a blast. They're super engaging and really, really well written. The endings are some of the best I've ever played.
- Gunplay is very fun, guns feel great, melee combat is better than most games.
- Interesting skills/perks/level up system.
The bad:
- Game is undercooked and absolutely PLAGUED with graphical glitches. Enemies may be swallowed by the floor, cars may flip in the air.
- Texture streaming probably seems like a great idea but works awfully here, you will see characters being spawned in parts sometimes, or appearing as PS1 models for a few seconds until the high-res textures finally load.
- Character pop in is the worst I've seen, NPCs spawn before your very eyes all the freaking time, it's very immersion breaking.
- Vehicle pop in is even worse! And it doesn't work sometimes, the worst immersion breaking bug I have seen is riding in Night City and all the damn streets are absolutely empty unless I stop for like 20 seconds and let the game load some cars.
- Very little variety in NPCs means you'll see crowds containing 4 or 5 instances of the same model, all one next to the other, terrible.
- Terrible NPC AI, even worse pedestrian dialogs, breaks immersion.
A lot of good, a sizeable amount of bad. Overall I still strongly recommend this game, it's a really amazing experience.
The good:
- This game has a jaw-dropping open world game, Night City is wonderful and incredibly designed, I've never seen a game with such verticality, this feels like a real place in a sense I had never experienced before.
- (Main) Characters are super interesting and behave like real people. Not only this has amazing voice acting, but character animations are a work of art. Each character is filled with small details that make them seem real; a character talking about something painful? they may be shaking their leg for a few seconds while showing a very realistic face expression. It's mesmerizing how GREAT these animations are.
- Main storylines are absolutely a blast. They're super engaging and really, really well written. The endings are some of the best I've ever played.
- Gunplay is very fun, guns feel great, melee combat is better than most games.
- Interesting skills/perks/level up system.
The bad:
- Game is undercooked and absolutely PLAGUED with graphical glitches. Enemies may be swallowed by the floor, cars may flip in the air.
- Texture streaming probably seems like a great idea but works awfully here, you will see characters being spawned in parts sometimes, or appearing as PS1 models for a few seconds until the high-res textures finally load.
- Character pop in is the worst I've seen, NPCs spawn before your very eyes all the freaking time, it's very immersion breaking.
- Vehicle pop in is even worse! And it doesn't work sometimes, the worst immersion breaking bug I have seen is riding in Night City and all the damn streets are absolutely empty unless I stop for like 20 seconds and let the game load some cars.
- Very little variety in NPCs means you'll see crowds containing 4 or 5 instances of the same model, all one next to the other, terrible.
- Terrible NPC AI, even worse pedestrian dialogs, breaks immersion.
A lot of good, a sizeable amount of bad. Overall I still strongly recommend this game, it's a really amazing experience.