Honestly, I actually really enjoyed my time with this game but there's a lot to say about it as an experience. I played on PC with a 'mostly' (ish, lmao) bug free experience, and managed to avoid most game breaking things (though I was forced to take a week break while waiting for them to patch a main quest back into functionality on my save file).
I think the core of my problems with this game really revolve around not being sure what it wants to be, particularly in how it was put forth in previews and what it seemed like the intent of the developers was. People, especially early critics, suggested that this game was going to be a real hard hitting RPG experience with emphasis on the R, and in some ways there is some pay off with the choices you make through the game with the end credits, but honestly, its mostly just a story about Johnny Silverhand and the vessel that carries him in the player just doesn't really feel like you're carving some sort of role playing niche in the narrative at all.
IMO, Keanu is both the best and worst part of the game. His performance is frankly stellar, and the character is engrossing, but is also entirely engulfs and overshadows the PC. For example, take the fact that even though there's a plethora of gangs and corps and organizations, the game doesn't even have a reputation system - mindboggling honestly. If you go in with low or no expectations as I did, I think that this is still a fine experience. However, you really can feel the wasted potential of this game.
Despite the copy pasted NPCs, the world felt alive to me, with funny and interesting and unique conversations on the street (legit over a 70 hour playthrough, I never heard a conversation between two random characters repeated). The atmosphere of the city is great. The music is actually extremely good, and they really commissioned an impressive amount of artists spanning a gamut of genres. Its such a shame to me how the poorly thought out NPC foot traffic, and actual traffic, particularly in the AI department, really screws with the feel of the environment when you decide to look to close.
The gameplay is just average in my opinion, and honestly to the point where I'm not even that interested in talking about it.
This game leaves me with a lot of mixed feelings: I can't recommend playing it. On the other hand, I do think there's many things to talk about with cyberpunk, and if you want to take part in the discourse over its lost potential, disastrous launch, and the things that it did get right, I think that it is an interesting experience at the very least. Depending on what type of gamer you are, this might be something you wouldn't want to miss out on for the phenomenon alone.
I think the core of my problems with this game really revolve around not being sure what it wants to be, particularly in how it was put forth in previews and what it seemed like the intent of the developers was. People, especially early critics, suggested that this game was going to be a real hard hitting RPG experience with emphasis on the R, and in some ways there is some pay off with the choices you make through the game with the end credits, but honestly, its mostly just a story about Johnny Silverhand and the vessel that carries him in the player just doesn't really feel like you're carving some sort of role playing niche in the narrative at all.
IMO, Keanu is both the best and worst part of the game. His performance is frankly stellar, and the character is engrossing, but is also entirely engulfs and overshadows the PC. For example, take the fact that even though there's a plethora of gangs and corps and organizations, the game doesn't even have a reputation system - mindboggling honestly. If you go in with low or no expectations as I did, I think that this is still a fine experience. However, you really can feel the wasted potential of this game.
Despite the copy pasted NPCs, the world felt alive to me, with funny and interesting and unique conversations on the street (legit over a 70 hour playthrough, I never heard a conversation between two random characters repeated). The atmosphere of the city is great. The music is actually extremely good, and they really commissioned an impressive amount of artists spanning a gamut of genres. Its such a shame to me how the poorly thought out NPC foot traffic, and actual traffic, particularly in the AI department, really screws with the feel of the environment when you decide to look to close.
The gameplay is just average in my opinion, and honestly to the point where I'm not even that interested in talking about it.
This game leaves me with a lot of mixed feelings: I can't recommend playing it. On the other hand, I do think there's many things to talk about with cyberpunk, and if you want to take part in the discourse over its lost potential, disastrous launch, and the things that it did get right, I think that it is an interesting experience at the very least. Depending on what type of gamer you are, this might be something you wouldn't want to miss out on for the phenomenon alone.