A Flawed World with a Great Story--Cyberpunk 2077

I've just spent 100 hours obsessively playing through Cyberpunk 2077.  I think it says something that the game has so firmly burned Night City, V, and Johnny Silverhand into my brain.  On the other hand, it's definitely not perfect (and unfortunately, thanks to the botched release, it's the subject of much scorn).  As a genre, I've always had a soft spot for cyberpunk--it's a fun aesthetic--futuristic and dystopian concepts twisted together into a perfect blend.

The 100 hours I spent in completing my first playthrough included the main storyline (*which included me playing through every single ending like a crazy person) and 99% of the side content (which includes side missions and all map marker gigs/tasks).  What can I say, I'm a completionist (which is also a bit of a masochistic trait).  The game could definitely be completed in a much shorter timeframe.

It's probably worthwhile to also preface this review with the fact that it was seriously a mistake for CDPR to release the game the way they did.  I wish they had delayed; I wish they had been honest about the state on the game on last-gen consoles--I wish that one of the few developers who I've felt to be very consumer conscious continued to stay that way.  I wasn't fully on the hype train so I don't know exactly what was advertised and then cut.  There are a lot of bitter people out there who feel extremely burned and likely have a right to feel that way. 

Pros:

Exploring Night City reveals some unique locations.

+ Night City manages to capture the cyberpunk feeling in a fabulous way.  It's a glowing, beautiful, dirty, and corporate ridden cesspool.  The city is broken up into many different districts and each has its own feeling and look--there's the grittier district of Watson; the massive, shining corporate skyscrapers and luxury apartments in City Center; the broken down, industrial feeling of Rancho Coronado; the vast, desert badlands that surround Night City.  There's much to taken in and it's fun just to drive through the city and take in the sights.

+ Memorable, well written characters.  V is a great character...one that you find yourself very attached to.  Johnny Silverhand (voiced and modeled after Keanu Reeves) is a lot of fun--an obnoxious character who grows on you as you play.  There's your pal Jackie Welles, a hardened gangster and V's best pal who has V's back but also takes the time to call his mom and so many more with great stories.  CD Projekt has always been good at crafting believable, likeable and flawed characters and there is an entire menu to choose from in Cyberpunk.

Judy Alvarez is one of the many great characters.

+ The main storyline and the scripted side missions are very strong (another tie to strong writing) and a lot of fun.  The story hinges around V (your character) and their quest to become an established mercenary in Night City.  Things go wrong when V takes a job to steal a valuable item from one of the many powerful corporations in Night City--V winds up with an unwanted passenger in his/her head...the digital construct of an infamous rocker and terrorist, Johnny Silverhand.  Silverhand's personality is slowly overwriting V and he/she must find a way to stop the process--this means siding with any and all factions in Night City--from the strangest gangs to the most powerful corporations.

There are also many great side missions that revolve around the backgrounds and stories of the many colorful characters you meet in Night City.  One of my favorites involved a vending machine that had become sentient and had basically become the best friend and therapist to his customers.  You'll also find some fun Easter eggs...I don't want to spoil much, but you encounter GLADOS (from Portal) at one point.

The length of the main storyline has also been chopped down (since many players of The Witcher 3 never finished it), so if you want to speed through the story, it's very doable in a shorter amount of time.

+ Voice acting is great.  Both female and male V are really solid and Keanu Reeves is great as Johnny Silverhand.  

+ The many gangs of Night City.  Each controls a different territory and has its own unique look and set of abilities.  One of my favorites is Maelstrom--a group that is obsessed with essentially replacing any of their meat parts with metal.  The first brushes with the gang can be a bit disarming as you realize that some of them have completely replaced half of their face with weird technology.

At one point, my V looked like this.

+ Oodles of different clothing items to give your V a unique look.  Gang members tend to drop items that match their look--for example, 6th Street gang members are sort of pseudo-patriotic, so you'll loot items like cowboy hats or flag decked vests.  You can also loot clothing from many containers and much of it captures the cyberpunk look--shiny, futuristic metallic items or punk inspired, spiky jackets.  I do wish there was some sort of transmogrification/item appearance option--there's some really awesome stuff out there, but you're limited by the item quality of what you loot (or can craft).  Clothing is largely an aesthetic choice and has a limited effect on gameplay, but there are a lot of fun items floating around in the game.

+ Many unique vehicles with cool interior details.  It's fun to just hop into any of the different cars and see how they differ in looks and handling.  Some are great...and some absolutely suck.

 + Adding "chrome" to your character that can enhance their abilities.  There are many ripperdocs located throughout Night City with a wide variety of tech that can do something simple like increasing your stamina all the way up to installing mantis blades that pop out of your arms.  It's a lot of fun to experiment with different pieces of tech.

+ Variety of weapons to choose from--melee weapons include items that range from crowbars to katanas.  Guns are pretty standard fare--pistols, submachine guns, assault rifles, shotguns--but certain guns have "smart" technology that guides bullets to targets (and requires specific body mods to use).  The gunplay felt surprisingly good.

+ Multiple endings.  You get to decide how V and Johnny's story ends and there is some variety.   

+ Photo mode offers a fun way to capture some fun snaps of your V.  Since the game is in first person you don't get much of an opportunity to view V in action, but photo mode includes a variety of poses, filters, frames, and backgrounds.  Plus, all your images are saved in an easy to find location that doesn't require additional searching or other unnecessary steps.

Cons:

- Crafting is a bit specialized and higher end items require a ton of talent points in tech.  It's also a bit confusing as you loot item components and upgrade components (which are used separately for crafting new items and upgrading existing items).  I did actually invest a bunch of points in tech and was annoyed at how time consuming it was to upgrade components--there's no option to do it in bulk, so you have to click a bajillion times if you're trying to pop out a bunch of upgraded components.  The good news is that you can loot many great items, but it sucks that crafting isn't better.

- Life path choices don't really change much.  The beginning of the game is slightly different depending on which of the three you pick and you do get some different dialogue choices throughout the game, but the differences are negligible.

+/- Main story length.  (This one could be a pro or con depending on your opinion about story length.  I know that one of CDPR's goals was to make the main story shorter than The Witcher 3 so that more people would actually finish it)  The stories are the best part of the game and I found myself wanting more.  It's a very sincere wish of mine that developers can figure out a way to find a better balance of side content and main content.  Any more it just feels like every open world game has to bury players in so many repetitive (and, let's be honest, almost completely pointless) tasks--and it can really feel like those tasks drown out the best parts of the game.

- The world can feel weirdly empty at times--if they were going for something Rockstar-esque...well, it's just not quite that.  You can be driving through parts of the city and encounter very little or no traffic (in some ways, it's nice to be able to drive like a maniac...but it just doesn't feel realistic for a massive city).  Pedestrian behavior is also kind of odd--people can walk through you at times and you're bumping into them at others.  People just randomly appear...and often you can see long lines of vanishing head and brake lights on the interstate for cars that aren't really there.  There's just something that's not quite right about how the open world works and populates.  Maybe it will get better with time and patches...  If you're hoping for a Rockstar level of detail in the way the world works, it's just not there.  

- Even though I'm not a frame rate obsessor, I felt like performance was a bit iffy.  I turned down many of the more demanding settings (the game still looks good--I don't have a 4k monitor, so it's 1080p for me) and still felt like my poor GPU was a bit toasty.  I noticed quite a bit of graphical sluggishness during rainy and foggy weather (and yes, I turned the fog details all the way down).  

Taking in the views of Night City.

- Open world activities/gigs get boring fairly quickly.  The map is absolutely scattered with different activities--fixers have tasks they need completed, the NCPD needs help dealing with criminal activity, there are side missions--typical of basically every open-world game out there, there's tons.  These tasks are how V can earn some extra money and builds up street cred (which allows the purchase of the best weapons and cyberware), and by skipping them there's a chance you could miss out on some of the better side missions.  I wish that there was more of a story tied into the gangs in Night City since you are mostly dealing with them during these side gigs.  At the beginning I had an idea that the gangs would attack my character on sight since V was essentially decimating their ranks...but it never happened.

The one positive thing I can say for all the open world activities is that each activity and location has a story.  Shards reveal the circumstances and can add in a bit of interest factor.

- Side activities are a bit meh.  Similar to The Witcher there are a couple of options for competitive tasks--one involves a strange type of armed racing and the other is boxing.  The racing quest actually has some depth and is worthwhile, but I highly disliked the boxing.  My character had more of a stealth build so I didn't invest many points in the body tree (the melee/physical stats category) so most boxing matches were my character absolutely getting one-shot.  Most of the fights were possible with a ton of running around, but that's just not enjoyable.  The only side missions I didn't complete were the boxing ones.

- Combat/stealth isn't anything to write home about.  The ability to use tech and hacking is fun, but everything else is pretty standard fare.  There are only a couple "boss" type of fights.   

-Bugs/glitches.  Anyone who can read and follows gaming knows about the disastrous release.  I waited for six months and to see how much the game improved before I bought it.  I didn't encounter anything game breaking, but things still aren't completely fixed.  There were moments when my character was firing an invisible gun, when my shadow wouldn't have a head, or when my character would randomly be missing clothing (or items wouldn't be visible).  The game was stable and I had no crashes, but don't be surprised if you do encounter some residual weirdness.  I was bummed that I did all the side tasks in the game but one glitched out so I didn't get the achievement for one district.

Some glitches are kind of fun though--one that I enjoy is when you summon your vehicle and it spawns in a line of traffic.  Shit goes flying in an amazing way and it's hilarious.

- People who like highly detailed character creation options might be a bit disappointed.  There aren't any sliders but there are multiple (up to 20 or more in some cases) different options for certain features when creating your V. 

- First person feels like a weird choice.  You spend time to create a unique character and then the game is in first person, so you only get to see your character on the character screen (and when you look in the mirror/take a shower).  The only time you can switch to third person is when you're driving.  I was hoping there would be some cutscenes where you get to see your character more (you do get to see your character during the end cutscenes).

Recommendation:

I absolutely fell hard for Night City and the great story and characters.  Sadly, I think many people will miss out or skip it entirely due to a couple of different factors--the first being the debacle that was the release and the second being the fact that the boring side content has a tendency to lose people before they've truly delved into the solidness of the main storyline.  Word of advice--don't get too focused on playing the map marker elimination game and try to pace out story and side activities to give yourself a break from the repetitiveness (this might be difficult on the first playthrough).

It makes me sad that Cyberpunk 2077 will forever be known for the horribly botched release because the main storyline and characters are great.  Night City is amazing.  The best parts of the game are those that are traditional strengths in CD Projekt games.  Unfortunately, the open world aspects of the game fall a bit flat.  There are still bugs and glitches that need to be addressed (and I'm hoping that CD Projekt keeps working to fix them).  I would recommend it, but with the caveat that if you're hoping for perfection (and that Cyberpunk would be everything the hype said it would be) you might be disappointed.