A five star first few hours just like I remembered it back then. I had never finished this and finally sat down to. Not sure if it was worth it because my opinion is drastically lower as a result. It's still a cool game and especially for 2005, but mired in clunk, bugs, and some dubious design choices, where the player is constantly lost and challenge just becomes a chore to get over rather than an accomplishment in overcoming. The fact that I felt compelled to finish this nonetheless says a lot in favor of the things it did right, but I was close to giving up.

The cherry on top is that I couldn't even finish the very, very end of the game due a known game-breaking bug, and had to watch the final scene through a video.

Decent game in absolute terms, and has high points and unique things to offer (love the snowy design), but leaves a disappointing aftertaste - it feels more like a side story, making it a lukewarm conclusion to the series, and it's just the weakest entry in its own right.

Uri's clear talent for writing and game design just doesn't quite deliver on the level of the previous games in the series. It's not that anything was particularly bad - it just felt like a shallow execution of its ideas. Everything in the writing could have been developed further to just have more of everything while also being more cohesive, giving this game more of a distinct identity, and tying together the series better. All without necessarily increasing the playtime, even.

Audio has major control issues and limitations, which is not new at this point but is especially painful in this game - barely audible music by default, while the voice volume is fixed and can only be partially disabled.

Make sure to see both Good End 1 and 2 for the full experience.

One of those games where it hurts to collapse everything to a single rating. I couldn't possibly properly review this game without a wall of text. For gameplay alone, 3 stars. Hopefully they polish it up, but the bugs didn't diminish the experience too much (ymmv).
As a narrative game experience (a la Mass Effect etc.), 4 stars, and that's what I'll remember this game for. The crazy high AAA production value really pays off here. The plot, while convoluted and having its ups and downs, gives a good amount to chew on. But most importantly, 2077 carries the cyberpunk ethos: the tech is great, yet everything is terrible. Seeing the experiences V and other excellently performed characters go through in Night City really brings that stark feeling to life, and makes what humanity they are able to display that much more treasured. Miss some of those characters already.

This feels like an ambitious game that tried to hit a home run in every way and either missed entirely or it isn't even clear to what degree it succeeded. The major negatives are the hilaribad voice acting and shockingly terrible taste in music direction. The open world is dangerous and actually compelling to explore. The game mechanics are complex and intriguing but hard to decipher. There's a good game in here somewhere... but the drawbacks make it hard to feel compelled to find it. But even just writing this review after a couple years, I feel the itch to give it a spin again and do just that.

This is the kind of game that just embodies an original artistic perfection throughout and none of its flaws can keep it from being a masterpiece. The biggest drawback is the slow random encounter fights which I mostly left on auto-battle. The story is not something that results in an epic climax but rather comes to a satisfying close. There, that's about the limit of what I can criticize. It's a surreal adventure unlike anything else out there and has spawned numerous fan games and influenced plenty more, and its continued obscurity is a disservice to games as a medium.

An engaging first 10 hours with the game starts going downhill until there's no motivation to go further - dropped after 3/4 divine beasts. Breath of the Wild does the open-world part relatively well mostly by virtue of not being an RPG, but suffers from the same problems as all open-world games these days: there's a big shallow world with a bunch of stuff to do and little impetus to do it unless you like doing a bunch of random stuff (or in other games' cases, grinding). The divine beasts are just utter disappointments, and the short-lived shrines do nothing to make up for that. Good on Nintendo for changing up the formula, and there are even some excellent parts here and there, but I hope the next game has tighter design and if there is an open world I hope theres's something really unique about how it's executed or it becomes just a bonus to a well-designed core game.

I've just played this for the first time. Starting with the bad, the tone of the game is completely inconsistent, and I wish it had retained its dark character from the first arc of the story. There are several slumps throughout the game and some areas are dull. The combat mechanics are pretty messed up such that one level can be the difference between you being on par with enemies and you being nearly useless. I once got save state locked into a boss fight that I couldn't possibly win and ended up cheating to get through.

On the positive side, the music is good, some environments are really cool, and the setting, themes, and some of the game's mechanics must have been innovative for the game's time. Some side quests you do actually cause the a town to be further developed and open up new side arcs. There's a major theme of life and death that the story carries in many ways, even discovered when talking to townspeople sometimes. It feels sometimes a little grim, yet there's depth to it and it's really satisfying to experience, especially when it's a SNES game from 1995. The ending is beautiful and caused one of the major songs to go from evoking a comfortable vibe to evoking something like an ambiguous positive melancholy.

I ended up feeling let down by the what the initial arc of the game seemed to promise, but there were enough high points and impressive qualities along the way that I'll remember this fondly. It's possible that had I played it back then, it could have been a personal favorite.

Revisiting it 15 years or so later, this game is just all over the place. For every up there is a down, and sometimes we are talking about entire aspects or systems of the game. The biggest down is the plot, which is mostly terrible. But also on the writing side you have this theme of love that is as youthfully cheesy as it is somehow effective. For every contrived plot point, dense as hell protagonist moment, and completely broken game mechanic, you have an enjoyable part of said broken mechanics, a dense as hell protagonist moment that is too hilarious to not be enjoyable, an ambitiously directed battle sequence, a really out-there place you never expected the game to take you, and - let's be real - "Eyes on Me".

In the end, for all its flaws, I still have to give it an enthusiastic recommendation.