Cyberpunk 2077 - Ishvii Reviews

After a diabolical launch full of game-breaking bugs and immersion breaking jank, CDPR have finally turned this game around and made it a memorable game worth your time. When I initially tried to play it, it was impossible to progress through multiple missions and I said "I'll update my review sometime in 2021 when they've fixed the game". Well, it's taken them 3 years and another $125 million, but it is finally done. Cyberpunk 2077 is now a memorable FPS with unique mechanics, excellent voice acting and a great story. It's still a very graphically demanding game, but if you have modern hardware it is a truly beautiful game.

Pros

Hacking in combat is the main stand-out mechanic for me. You can't do that in other games and it's really well done
It's gorgeous if you have the hardware for it
There are multiple ways to complete quests
Sound effects are brilliant
Fantastic soundtrack
Fully, convincingly voice acted
Main missions are exhilarating and immersive. Like seriously brilliant and memorable sequences. Quests are the absolute highlight of the game
The city is really detailed, full of things to explore
You can skip through conversations, even when they're happening with live NPCs around you rather than cutscenes. Everyone speeds up and moves to the next bit of the conversation
The Braindances are really cool. A live recording where events unfold, but you can pause, forward / rewind, look around, search for clues in visual, thermal and sound layers
Of the 20 bugs I detailed when I played at launch, all of them are now fixed
The attributes make meaningful differences to the ways you can approach missions and dialogue
The main mission (20 hours) is WAY shorter than The Witcher 3 (70+ hours) and I really appreciate that. There's just as much content in the game, but it's all been moved into side missions to make the main story within reach of finishing for normal people
I really liked the ending I got. It was "the bad ending" but it was really emotionally well done and memorable

Cons

At some point during development, car customisation got dropped. There are no garages to repair, just re-summon and it's magically fixed or steal a new one
Same thing with wall running. This was in a gameplay trailer and never made it in
I wish the journal would tell you more about what was going on other than your immediate objective. You jump between main quests a lot and I've often forgotten what's going on in each one
When you're using the scanner, you can zoom in, except when you're looking near an enemy, then the mouse wheel scrolls through quickhacks. I wish zoom and scrolling quickhacks were different buttons
When looking through cameras, you can't see your remaining RAM (hacking resource)
All 3 main bosses are melee focused and completely ruin a hacker or ranged character. I ended up switching down from Hard to Easy just for bosses
[spoiler] it's a shame that there is no way to finish the game and survive. In open world games, I always want to be able to continue playing around in the world after finishing the main story