This review contains spoilers
This one just doesn't know what it wants to be: it tried to be a tragedy, it tried to be an in-depth RPG, it tried to be an open-ended action game... and it largely failed all those targets.
Don't get me wrong, this game is a blast, you'll have a lot of fun playing it and you should definitely pick it up at some point. If only because of the stunning visuals, the entertaining action sequences, and a couple of well written and well acted characters. But that's mostly where it begins and ends.
Let's get this out of the way: this game is not an RPG. It is a borderlands-like shooter with some RPG elements. Sure, there are a couple of interesting builds you can create but your stats barely influence the way you interact with the characters and the world around you, at most you can open doors in different ways and unlock some conversation options but nothing actually important.
Case in point, if you're roleplaying as a stealth character, you're going to have a terrible time here because at times you'll get thrown into combat just because the game decides it makes sense from a narrative perspective and you're forced to submit. Also I'm not sure if this is a new change as of patch 2.0 but using quickhacks will cause enemies to trace you with little chance to fight back unless you have memory wipe or other preventive measures.
You can tell the world and the assets had a lot of love put into them but ultimately exploring the game nets you very little rewards aside from some generic encounters and gigs, which I think are actually fine and serve their purpose.
Driving in the game is horrible until you have enough money to buy high end cars that actually handle semi-decently. It's as if they were trying to go with GTA IV's approach to driving and botched it. What I mean by this is that the vehicles have weight to them and each handle very differently but the physics just dont make sense, let alone the awful collisions.
Despite these drawbacks the combat and overall gameplay feel very fluid and nice. I was a bit turned off by the first-person perspective but I quickly learned to like it because I saw how immersive it could be when paired with the amount of beautifully motion captured cutscenes.
I could've taken all of these flaws pretty well and look way past them if the narrative carried the game somehow. Unfortunately, the writing does not make up for it.
On the first act of the game, two very charismatic and seemly interesting characters who are very important to the protagonist's up-and-coming get discarded very early on without deserving an ounce of character development or proper backstory exposition.
Not long after, you get introduced to Johnny Silverhand, immediately sealing your fate in the story and annoyingly stealing the spotlight for the most of it. This also destroys a lot of the (minimal) roleplaying you could've been trying to act out ever since the irrelevant origin/introduction quests.
Along the way you get to meet and work with some very interesting characters like Panam, Judy, and River, with the latter having one of the best questlines in the entire game by the way, albeit very short.
Other than those you have Rogue and Kerry who only seem to have interest in you because of Johnny and nothing else, which I can obviously understand why, but it makes me wonder what would happen with them if you took Johnny out of the equation. Would you even get to meet them?
It doesn't matter anyway, the final act of the game comes around and, depending on your chosen ending, destroys more or less everything you've built along the way.
One could argue that The Devil and The Star endings are more or less coherent with the game you've been playing up to this point, but then you have stuff like The Sun in which the game shifts its tone so wildly it feels like you're playing a dream sequence.
This is the thing I hate about the endings: they completely ignore the established character personalities (and even V's personality for that matter) just to convey the idea that "there are no happy endings in Cyberpunk". If you really want to go with that angle, then you have to make sure you write endings that are in harmony with what you've been shown so far. Don't just force the player's hand into submitting to your own edgy vision of what the game should end like. The game constantly preaches to you that "there's nothing you could've done" when clearly there are a lot of options you could've taken at the end of the day.
I was hoping the solution to this false dilemma imposed by the game would be fixed in the new ending introduced in Phantom Liberty and unfortunately it was not. At face value, they gave the players the ending many people wanted, but sprinkled in some forced, unreasonable, illogical plot points just so they could once again paint this rainy cloud over the protagonist and check their "no happy endings" box during the writers meeting.
I feel like I'm rambling at this point so I'm gonna cut this off.
This is a good game, but don't get too attached to it or you'll begin to hate it for what it is and wonder what could've been.
No amount of patching will fix it, ever.
Don't get me wrong, this game is a blast, you'll have a lot of fun playing it and you should definitely pick it up at some point. If only because of the stunning visuals, the entertaining action sequences, and a couple of well written and well acted characters. But that's mostly where it begins and ends.
Let's get this out of the way: this game is not an RPG. It is a borderlands-like shooter with some RPG elements. Sure, there are a couple of interesting builds you can create but your stats barely influence the way you interact with the characters and the world around you, at most you can open doors in different ways and unlock some conversation options but nothing actually important.
Case in point, if you're roleplaying as a stealth character, you're going to have a terrible time here because at times you'll get thrown into combat just because the game decides it makes sense from a narrative perspective and you're forced to submit. Also I'm not sure if this is a new change as of patch 2.0 but using quickhacks will cause enemies to trace you with little chance to fight back unless you have memory wipe or other preventive measures.
You can tell the world and the assets had a lot of love put into them but ultimately exploring the game nets you very little rewards aside from some generic encounters and gigs, which I think are actually fine and serve their purpose.
Driving in the game is horrible until you have enough money to buy high end cars that actually handle semi-decently. It's as if they were trying to go with GTA IV's approach to driving and botched it. What I mean by this is that the vehicles have weight to them and each handle very differently but the physics just dont make sense, let alone the awful collisions.
Despite these drawbacks the combat and overall gameplay feel very fluid and nice. I was a bit turned off by the first-person perspective but I quickly learned to like it because I saw how immersive it could be when paired with the amount of beautifully motion captured cutscenes.
I could've taken all of these flaws pretty well and look way past them if the narrative carried the game somehow. Unfortunately, the writing does not make up for it.
On the first act of the game, two very charismatic and seemly interesting characters who are very important to the protagonist's up-and-coming get discarded very early on without deserving an ounce of character development or proper backstory exposition.
Not long after, you get introduced to Johnny Silverhand, immediately sealing your fate in the story and annoyingly stealing the spotlight for the most of it. This also destroys a lot of the (minimal) roleplaying you could've been trying to act out ever since the irrelevant origin/introduction quests.
Along the way you get to meet and work with some very interesting characters like Panam, Judy, and River, with the latter having one of the best questlines in the entire game by the way, albeit very short.
Other than those you have Rogue and Kerry who only seem to have interest in you because of Johnny and nothing else, which I can obviously understand why, but it makes me wonder what would happen with them if you took Johnny out of the equation. Would you even get to meet them?
It doesn't matter anyway, the final act of the game comes around and, depending on your chosen ending, destroys more or less everything you've built along the way.
One could argue that The Devil and The Star endings are more or less coherent with the game you've been playing up to this point, but then you have stuff like The Sun in which the game shifts its tone so wildly it feels like you're playing a dream sequence.
This is the thing I hate about the endings: they completely ignore the established character personalities (and even V's personality for that matter) just to convey the idea that "there are no happy endings in Cyberpunk". If you really want to go with that angle, then you have to make sure you write endings that are in harmony with what you've been shown so far. Don't just force the player's hand into submitting to your own edgy vision of what the game should end like. The game constantly preaches to you that "there's nothing you could've done" when clearly there are a lot of options you could've taken at the end of the day.
I was hoping the solution to this false dilemma imposed by the game would be fixed in the new ending introduced in Phantom Liberty and unfortunately it was not. At face value, they gave the players the ending many people wanted, but sprinkled in some forced, unreasonable, illogical plot points just so they could once again paint this rainy cloud over the protagonist and check their "no happy endings" box during the writers meeting.
I feel like I'm rambling at this point so I'm gonna cut this off.
This is a good game, but don't get too attached to it or you'll begin to hate it for what it is and wonder what could've been.
No amount of patching will fix it, ever.