Cyberpunk 2077 Review

 I am about 40 hours or so into Cyberpunk 2077 and have completed maybe 10% of the game. I feel like I am just scratching the surface but have seen enough to know what I like and don’t like. There are going to be some spoilers in her, so beware. 

Let’s start with the pros before I get into the complaining. This is a beautiful world. The textures and architecture are stunning. There are little nooks of detail everywhere and you can always look closer. Hardly any space is blank or feels unused. Even areas where little action takes place have lots of details like hobo hovels and feel lived in. 

There is lots of variety in the game. There is an endless variety of people and even so I feel like I see familiar faces sometimes. I pass cliques of sex workers hanging out near their favorite streetfood vendor when I am going to and from my fixer. There is a small-time gangster slapping and stomping someone that wronged him in an alley (I stole his car when he was busy). I see gangs that are hanging out and committing crimes with their shiny rides parked in a believable tableau. When I go to the nicer parts of town, it is a lot of corpos walking around and looking at their devices. The world feels random and yet also hand crafted. I can admire how hard that was to do. 

The variety extends to the vehicles too. If this game just wanted to be a Cyberpunk version of GTA, it has them beat on detail and variety (NB: I have not played GTA V but CP looks on par). I would live to say that I have not seen two cars that look alike (I’ll talk about this more when I touch on spawning on the Con section), but the makes and models of the base cars are still plenty to keep me amazed. They also all drive differently. I had to “borrow” a van while running from a fight that was out of my league and it accelerated, braked and handled very differently from the hatchback that I drove to the fight and different still from my basic ride. I nabbed a Tyger Claw’s sporty ride after wrecking their crew (we are NOT friends), and promptly drove into a post at full speed. I was not ready for the acceleration. 

I keep finding new weapons and weapon types. Just when I think I have the best pistol in the world, some cyberpsycho drops a type of rifle I have not seen before. Just like the cars, they all handle differently. Just because you have shot a power assault rifle does not mean the next one you find will handle anything like it. Layer on that the three classes of weapons, Power, Tech and smart, and there is a weapon for every situation. 

In addition, there are attachments like scopes and muzzle attachments. Each has some minor effects in game but even the same type of scope may look a little different when attached to your gun. For a while I had a gross pink scope on my shiny black pistol because it was the only one I had. While changing things around, I managed to get a matching shiny black scope and was thrilled. (There is no way to tell this from the menus that I have found. Again more in the Con section.) It wasn’t until later that I noted that even two of the same type of scope give slightly different bonuses.

There are also mods that are non-removable (at least so far) patches that are almost like firmware that can tweak the specs of a piece of gear. They can give little boosts to accuracy, damage or crit and they get more powerful and expensive the more rare they are. For example, I bought a low ROF, high damage power revolver and attached a scope and silencer then applied some mods that increased crit chance and damage. That combined with my sneaky build and that gave me a weapon that can one shot thugs at my level as long as I am not seen. Now, it is a pea shooter in a gunfight so at least things are balanced. 

The variety of missions is also impressive. I’m still just getting my toes wet so may not have a good perspective just yet. The story mission are full of talking and choices and so far very few have been the same or similar. There are lots of main story missions going on at the same time and it is hard to keep them straight. Sometimes you are sneaky infiltrating some place to extricate someone. Other times you are going to get information or help from someone that does not particularly like you. Still other time you are cracking heads but the best ones are were you never draw a weapon. 

When you are driving around and are near a side mission, a neighborhood fixer will call you and let you know the details. You may need to get something and bring it to a drop point or you may need to sling some lead. Not a lot of tactical variety as there are usually goons in your way but the stories behind them are colorful and fleshed out. There are also little crimes to stop all over that can range from gangs trying to break into a shop to a shootout with the cops. These mission are fun divergences. No idea if they are repeatable but they sure are a lot of them. 

You can solve any mission guns blazing if you want to COD the whole game. Not going to lie, it will be hard. Even with the best guns and equipment the best player is going to get delt with. Though it is cliche to play a sneaky archer you can not argue with the effectiveness. No idea how to play this game without sneak and melee only. Seems rough. 

It is also possible to do a non-lethal playthrough and in some missions, it might be wiser. Many weapons can be converted to non-lethal versions with mods, many quick hacks are non-lethal and the assassin-kill-from-behind move has a non-lethal finish. You can also distract enemies with almost every object with your cybernetic hacking skills. 

The story is rich and complex. Choices are never clearly one good, one bad and one neutral. You kind of respond based on how you feel about the situation and the characters respond to you based on how they feel. It is all very nebulous and organic feeling. For example, Judy didn’t like my choices and was being really mean to me. Later when she asked me for a favor, I could agree or be non-committal. Because she had made me mad, I shut her down (not sure what effects that had but more on that later). 

The characters are also colorful and broadly drawn. Everything about them seems well thought out and in a theme. You get to know your buddy Jackie pretty well and later have to make some choices for him. I didn’t have a problem picking for him because I felt like I knew him as a person. 

Even the NPCs seems to have personality. Unlike in Skyrim, where I felt like I was just interacting with the same voice actors with different hats on, in Cyperpunk every person that I interact with feels unique. The voice acting is stellar and the faces and wardrobe breathtaking with detail. What really get me is the personality. Take for instance the receptionist at Clouds. She is polished and professional but there are little bits of personality poking through like a slip seen under a skirt (I wish I had taken better notes about this part). She has the tone of someone that has to talk to sex-crazed idiots all day but wont let herself roll her eyes or make them feel ashamed. The cherry is the andrigious names at the end with no clear identifier as to which is the boy or girl leaving the arrogant (or those with the lack of dialogue options) to blindly pick or humbly ask. 

As for the cons. I want to start this section by saying that I DO like this game. I am going to turn over every rock, replay then research and replay again with mods. There are some gripes that break immersion and some parts that feel incomplete but nothing in my list of dislikes makes the game unplayable or approaches requiring a refund. Here we go in no particular order.

There are some clipping issues. It is not uncommon for vehicles to be sun in up to their windows, bodies to clip into vehicles, items or bodies to clip so that they are un-lootable. While annoying when I can’t loot a sweet purple item from a Scav that I rightly downed it doesn't break immersion like a seeing a Chevillon sunk so low into concrete that I can see over it only to pop up on its wheels once someone bumps it. 

Even with the seemingly endless variety of Night City’s inhabitants and vehicles, it is common to pass the same person twice in a row or see two Mahir vans pulled up next to each other at a redlight. It snaps me out of immersion and makes me remember I am playing a game.

It also breaks immersion when people and vehicles materialize or disappear right in front of me. I’ve also had people popping in and out in the background of dialogue scenes. I could probably get over this one but it adds to the unfinished feeling of the game. 

Here is a common complaint I see that I also share. The combat AI is a little lackluster. I know that this is not and was never intended to be a combat simulator and I can deal with some stupid AI. Fallout and Farcy NPCs are not going to win any awards for tactical combat, but when and enemy in Cyberpunk has a problem it does kind of ruin the game. 

You’ll be in a hot and heavy gunfight, running from cover to cover and trying to switch to your Smart SMG and the Tyger Claw you are fighting is at a dead stop facing a crate. You’ll creep around the corner, but there is no motion from the armed and angry gangster. Cautiously you will shoot him a few times in the head, you know as a test. He will go through a vocal routine of yelling in pain or talking trash to you, but will continue to stare at his box like he will win a prize for it. The only prize he wins is deadness as you pepper him with more shots. 

When so much of the game is centered around taking down bad guys, to get the silent treatment from them is a major problem that needs to be fixed. It does not happen very often or enough to make the game “unplayable” for me but it is worse than annoying. It is disappointing. I’ll spend so much time sneaking, hacking and stealth taking down only to end up with staked prey at the end. I really hope they more than fix this but allow units of enemies to act in a coordinated fashion.

NPC reactions in general could use a lot of work. Everyone walks the same way, ducks and covers the same way, gets out of cars and runs the same way. It really breaks immersion when you see identical reactions from two people at the same time. Once you have played the game for a while, you can see the scripted responses and motions. 

For as much as I enjoy the rich and morally grey story, it does feel like some scenes are on rails. There is usually one one yellow dialogue option that progresses the conversation and some BS blue options that don’t seem to have any impact. Sometimes when there are multiple options they are all basically the same and the NPCs react in a way that seems scripted to fit any of the choices. For a game that did bill itself as an RPG with branching story paths, it seems like large chunks of the game are on rails. Not sure this one is fixable without some major work.

Even though the world is rich and deep, I feel like I am watching it happen in a fish tank rather than interacting with it. If I steal that thug’s car that is beating up his friend in the alley from before, he doesn’t chase me but keeps kicking his friend. When I pull someone out of their car in traffic, they just cower or run off. I want to see them shaking their fist at me in the rear view. I want the corpo that I just tossed out of his Quadra to immediately get on the phone and send thugs after me. I want the Tyger Claw whose bike I just stole to show up later with his boys and try to jump me. I want to feel the consequences of my actions and feel the world responding to them. 

One thing that could happen is to track and display faction reputation. Maybe if you drop a bunch of Wraiths then you start getting to hot to handle and fixers stop offering you jobs. Maybe certain neighborhoods start getting too dangerous to even visit and you need to let things cool down. I find it unbelievable that I can waste several dozen gang members and there not be some sort or repercussions. 

The developers clearly played GTA and that inspired this game. One feature they missed was having the minimap scale to the speed you are going. In a car you need more notice when the direction to your waypoints change. As it stands now, you can be barreling through the streets of Night City and get next to no time to make a turn. Makes navigating in the city and driving in a car harder than it needs to be. 

I also like to track enemies on the minimap when sneaking as once you have tagged them you can see their facing. Makes sneaking a breeze. Trouble is, the minimap is set at a fixed distance. You can have a tagged enemy spot you and them not be on the mini map. I wish it would scale to include the relevant local information. 

In the grim darkness of the future, there is no flashlight. This game is dark at times, not just thematically but also actually. There has been more than one occasion where I was lost in the dark. While this was creepy and scary it was also silly since V gets their eyes popped out and replaced in the first stretch of the game. Why vision modes were not included in the game I do not know. If coding everything for infrared and dark vision was too much, why not include a flashlight? Of all the gaping holes in this game’s development, this one is the most unbelievable. 

It is a minor gripe but some of the lootable objects in game seem very phoned in. There is a generic foil container that stands in for an object that you can eat or drink. It looks kind of silly when something that looks like a happy meal drops out of a vending machine. Very few of the objects icons in inventory match what they look like on screen. There are times when I have said, “When did I pick up a keg of beer?” I didn’t. It was a generic beverage. It is confusing and breaks immersion. 

Also, all sodas do one thing, all alcohol does one thing and all food does one thing. Come on, in Skyrim there was a difference between what an apple did and what cheese did at least in terms of how much HP they gave you. Making all classes of food do the same thing takes a little fun out of it. Why not make the expensive beverages in the classy part of town give a bigger boost and cost more? Why not make the bathtub hooch that the nomads cook up give you some weird bonus but mess you up. It just feels phoned in and like very little thought was given to the consumable system. 

I have big problems with the crafting system. Aside from being kind of generic, I don’t like that V can make a gun from some used soda cans in zero time anywhere including in combat. Maybe I am spoiled by the crafting system in Fallout, but it is about dragging buckets of loot back to your hideout and making guns out of spare parts. There should be crafting stations and that is a golden opportunity missed for a third person animation like we saw in the trailers. I want to see my techno-hobo pulling weapons apart and putting them back together.

Better yet (and feel free to steal this idea CDPR) have the crafting be time based. Yes you can craft that legendary sniper rifle. Stick the materials in the 3D printer and it will be ready in 124 hours. Then sleep, fight or screw your way to pass the time. 

The components for the crafting system also seems phoned in. I know that Cyberpunk is not about crafting, but if you are going to include a system for it, you gotta put more thought into it other than tiered generic components. When you have a long history of more complex crafting systems like Fallout, Skyrim and Farcry, to not put much effort into it seems a little insulting. 

I also have problems with the carry weight system. Something like meds and components weigh nothing which means that at times you can be carrying 100 cans of soda, enough meds to heal an army and enough components to make guns to equip them. Part of this kind of RPG for me is having to triage what gear that I take out with me. I can take that heavy sniper rifle but I’ll have to leave more medpacks behind. Everything should weigh something and the carry weight is way too high. I played Cyberpunk 2020 the TTRPG back in the day and never carried more than 3 weapons. I did not expect to be able to carry as much as they allow.

I am spending too much time in inventory screens and selling screens that could be cut down by having a tagging system for trash like in Borderlands. There, as you accumulate literal mountains of guns, you can tag the ones you don’t want. Then when you reach a sell point, rid yourself of them with one fell swoop. Done. No hunting through screens. No accidentally selling your good weapons. 

I also need a crafting bar to make multiples of items. At later stages you can upgrade lower level components to higher level ones in the crafting menu but you have to do it one at a time. This takes forever when you have thousands of components to make.

I kind of wish companions were more of a thing. I mean, I usually just use them as pack animals (I’m looking at you Lydia), but I could use a buddy in NC to drive me around or shoot out of the window at my enemies. There are missions where you team up with others but they feel very scripted. I wish I could pick up a bunch of Nomads to run a hit on a Wraith camp or pay a deadly Solo to help me with an infiltration mission. 

The game wanted to be on par with Red Dead but to do that, the world would need to be filled with basically more of everything. They should have made a list of stuff you could do in RDR2 then checked all those boxes in Cyberpunk. 

That is a lot of gripes about a game that I genuinely love. I don’t feel that any of the faults or general unfinished nature of the game warrant the hate and backlash the developers have gotten. I loved No Man’s Sky when they released it too and did not understand the backlash then either. So call me a fanboy if you will, but I am OK playing this game while they patch the holes. I’d rather that than have no game and wait for a slightly better version. I’ve already gotten $60 worth of enjoyment from this game and will likely put hundreds of hours into it. 

The developers do deserve some public shaming as it is becoming clear that they mislead about what the game was going to be like and intentionally hid some of the problems. I am not really sure what their plan was in doing this. Maybe they thought they could fix the problems with the Nov to Dec delay that was for optimizing the game on all the platforms. Not cool to poorly lie about something then shrug when caught. Not cool at all, choom.