Here are my thoughts:
Bad Things:
- Buying weapons from vendors is utterly pointless. They're overpriced and you can just find/craft better ones in the field.
- Weapon variety sucks. Really, really sucks. There's a limited amount of weapon models, and one isn't different from another except stat wise and if it is a 'legendary' it has a different look. That's about it. If you've played with one weapon type, you've played with all of them. Borderlands style weapons hurt this a lot. Also why the fuck are there so many double barreled shotguns in 2077? And the smart sniper is fucking bolt action? Ugh. I know its for balancing, but ugh.
- Weaknesses literally do not matter.
- Clothing variety is decent, but it doesn't matter because armor is tied to clothing so it makes you look like a trash hobo. The amount of ugly baggy pants is infuriating. And there's just a metric fuckton of just generally ugly clothing. That's just opinion though.
- No ability to do basic customization of clothing, like change the color. Like a piece of clothing but it makes you look like a reject from a Mad Max movie from the 1990s? TOO BAD!
- Lack of just basic customization. Come the fuck on, I could customize Geralt's look more than V's.
- Some enemies are not hackable, which can fuck you on harder difficulties if your build centers around it.
- Weaknesses and weapon stats are utterly fucking pointless. Never once have I changed my playstyle because of 'weaknesses' or switched out my weapon because it possessed chemical, toxic or electric.
- DPS is the only weapon stat that really matters. Even then you can endlessly just upgrade a weapon you like and ignore all the others. So....yeah. Why did you even make borderlands style weapons? Oh yeah, because you were too fucking lazy to include a decent selection of guns.
- As I progress, I notice more and more bugs. Clipping models, enemies behaving like idiots (Tech Weapons and just shooting them to death while they remain still behind cover), melee hitboxes sucking....like a ton. Bad textures too.
- It is very VERY clear they didn't properly model third person, because you can try to go third person in Photo mode and it always sets your character to a basic pose, no matter what you are doing. There are probably a lot of 'cheats' in which they hide the jank of the model in first person.
- Tons of audio issues, conversations not starting or sounding far away.
- Issues with flags, certain events not triggering or triggering slightly early or late.
- The mirror is buggy as fuck, I get like 20 FPS when I look in the mirror to see my character for once. There are also lighting issues with it.
- Little difference between vendors and difficulty telling where you can purchase some things. Some vendors will have identical loadouts but others will have different ones, and there's really no rhyme or reason. I really don't like running around the entire fucking city to attempt to find something different in a shop. This is reminiscent of the earliest open world games and has no excuse being implemented in a modern title.
- NPCs pissing themselves and running when I double jump down the street is hilarious. Like I can get the entire street running away from me. NPC civilians are also retarded. They'll either sit and duck in front of your gun or run into your line of fire. They'll just stand around like dunces in the middle of a firefight and take 1 damage of shrapnel and OOPS suddenly Night City Teleporting cops teleported behind you to create the illusion that they were just over there as if you were a fucking retard.
- Lots of pop-in to make the city FEEL like its alive. Traffic disappears from a distance and so do pedestrians.
- Street Cred is pointless. Nobody recognizes you for your talents, it just serves as a content gate, which could have literally been stats, your level or your skills. Its an afterthought. Like, I've got 50 street cred, I should be a solo tier god. Nobody knows me.
- You getting framed for killing the head of a major corporation is sort of completely forgotten about.
- UI gets really laggy and I notice issues with scrolling.
- UI glitches. I noticed I've got about 200+ meds that I try to dispose of that won't disappear from my inventory when I break them down. Though I still get the XP, makes it easy to farm crafting.
- Lack of 3rd person hurts it.
- Cops. Holy shit, the cops. They should have been completely reworked.
- Cyberware seems lacking. In Shadowrun and Cyberpunk, there was so much Cyberware could do. Here it feels stale and unimagined. Even Deus Ex had more imaginative cyberware.
- Johnny/V dynamic left me wanting more. This is hampered by the main story being too short and Johnny having some snide 1 liners to say. We should be able to influence Johnny's development as well as V. Personality switching might have actually been an interesting mechanic, with two different skill sets as you switch in and out of one or the other. Obviously voicing all these options would have been hard, but it probably would be doable if you didn't have Johnny as a celebrity or Grimes or other celebrity voice actors. For it being the main thrust of Cyberpunk, it doesn't play with it nearly as much as it should.
- There's not really any story-difference between lethal and non-lethal. Its only for your RP purposes or for a challenge. Even then, 'oh just plop in this cyberware and everything is non-lethal now'. Seriously?
Good Things:
- Despite being average, gunplay is fun. Despite there only really being 3 types of gun (Power, Tech and Smart) each one is different. So you can switch it up.
- Hacking is OP as fuck and fun as well. Nothing like blowing the synapses of assholes.
- Pretty much all builds are viable. Its very hard to fuck up character creation.
- Difficulty is good on very hard. It isn't too frustrating and it requires you to take a more measured approach. Overleveled fights still aren't impossible but they need to be cheesed.
- I am enjoying the story. Keanu is ok, he sounds like Keanu. I feel like they were insecure and didn't give him direction.
- It runs on Ultra at 1440p on my 1080. This game seems to be more CPU intensive.
- They kept the level of gore in, which is nice.
- Tech weapons are fun. Shame there's like barely any variety to them. Wow another double barreled shotgun. Amazing.
I'd say it rates about a 6 - 6.5. Generally the major problem is the massive amount of bugs and lack of optimization that went into it. There's also a lack of very basic features that are standard with many open world titles. A lot of game mechanics are thrown in to create the look of depth, but are honestly extremely shallow. It lacks quality of life features, customization, optimization and anything resembling polish. Despite 7 years, it feels like a late beta build of a game. All the systems are in place, it just needs more depth and polish. Which it obviously didn't get.
Honestly, CD Projekt has blown apart their reputation with this one title incredibly spectacularly by releasing an unfinished, buggy mess. I've just come to the conclusion that you just can't defend something like this anymore. There are a lot of lazy choices that are for their convenience (Borderlands 3 weapons, no 3rd person) and features they clearly mean to fix post-release but had no intentions of doing anything with in development (customization, police). They oversold the game and the backlash they get is completely deserving. They fucked their rep with this release because they staked their rep on it. Don't stake your rep when you're going to be this lazy and transparent with things.
I've also reversed my stance on mods a bit. Without major bug-fixes, it feels like it is going to be a fucking bitch to mod this. So I don't expect any decent mod capabilities until about 5-6 months from now. And with consoles in a completely fucked state, this will now take a backseat to the PS4 and XBox One releases, which will only hurt the title further. I'd say its been a complete and utter fuck up for CD Projekt.
That said, I still am enjoying it. I stand by that its still worth $35-45. It is not a $60 modern title though.
You can kill the BD tape perverts? I shot both of them in the head and five cops instantly spawned and iced me because apparently killing the pedophile serial killers was a crime. That might have been a glitch though, it's honestly hard to tell with this game.
That's a glitch. My stomach churned just talking with them and I got the tape and then immediately executed the son in front of the dad. Him trying to say "TALK TO ME FREDDY" with Freddy's lack of a head was kind of funny. I just straight up fully charged tech blasted him point blank, and I did the same to the dad, though of course the audio of the dad still played, who also didn't have a head.
I also murdered the corrupt cop who was selling people to Scavs. No wanted level there either.
