REVIEW SCORE: 5.9/10

Jeez where to start about Cyberpunk 2077… Let’s start with the good stuff.

The characters and the world are simply splendid. I like all the characters, they are unique and super interesting. I wanted to learn more about them and be their friends and/or lovers. Their story and the moments you have with them are fantastic. Even though, Claire’s story ends abruptly for me. I was left waiting for a call to follow up on what happened. I got nothing. With other characters there is some final meet-up, a wrap-up to what transpired and Claire just ends. I love Claire, her missions, and her character. And she is fucking beautiful. I wish I could have romanced her.

I like the world and I like how it looks. I wanted to be immersed in the city. It is so much fun to just walk around or drive in the city and see how cool it looks. Look at the people going about their cyberpunk life. But the world is filled with a lot of fluff. Gigs and police activity are garbage. For a cyberpunk game, you think working/helping with the police would be the last thing to do. Gigs are fine to an extent. You talk with a fixer about a job and they are usually interesting enough to do it. A little side story about a cheater or collecting money or whatever it is. My issue is the people giving you the gigs, the fixer. When you go to a new part of the city, you will randomly get a call from the fixer of the area to say “hello” and “I am your fixer of this area”. That’s it. You can learn more about them and meet up with them but only to learn their small backstory. Also, you don’t get the decision to say “yeah no I don’t want to work with you”. The decision has been made, you will work for them. And there lies the problem with the decisions. Decisions in this game are meaningless. They all gear you towards one direction no matter what. You can not influence it in any way and has no effect on what happens in the world. There is no greater impact. Life just moves on. It only changes when you beat the game but when you hit continue, you are sent back before the last mission. So those changes do not matter.

One of the worst things about the world is the fact you can not join any of the gangs if you want to. They are all enemies. You can not side with one except for the nomads which is part of the main story and if you do Panam’s quests. As much promise the devs offers, this is the most egregious thing that was left out. Imagine that you can go to one part of the city with no issue because you are buddies with them. Calling them up if you are in need of help. Attacking enemies’ stronghold to increase your area. Making it more immersive.

The game is riddled with bugs and crashes. I can not play longer than 2 hours before a crash happens. Typically when a crash happens it is pretty obvious why and when it happens. In Night City, it crashes whenever it feels like. Driving to the next quest, crash. In the middle of a quest, crash. It’s insane, like how can you release the game like this.

I also gotta mention that I had to wait for the save data corruption patch to release. This bug causes you to lose your save data if you crafted too many items. I was crafting everything while playing so it was only a matter of time until I get hit by it. Plus the patch doesn’t recover your saved data if it is corrupted, you will have to start over. If I had to start over, the Let’s Play was done.

The perks. The perks are garbage. They make sense on paper but when trying to implement them, you realize how useless it is. The throwing knife perk where you can not pick up your throwing knife after you throw it. It is lost in the ether of the net. The grapple with a gun perk should have been a mechanic in the game already. This perk always to have a gun out when you grapple with an enemy. Sound useful right, except that, grappling an enemy can only be achieved when the enemies are looking away. Once caught by an enemy, all of China knows I am here. Leaving grappling with a gun to be used once, maybe. The same goes for the grapple for 15% more armor perk. If it was possible to grapple someone from the front then these perks will immensely powerful.

Crafting in this game is cool but also garbage. I love that you can craft your outfit so you can be like a cartoon character and wear the same thing throughout the entire game. Plus crafting new items correspond with your level, so you will theoretically have the most up to date armor and weapons. You can also have perks that will boost your armor and weapon rating. The perks work here. Here is the downside, the iconic items. It was poorly explained that you must have the original iconic items to craft a new, better iconic weapon. There is no warning given that selling or dismantling the iconic items will lose the item forever. Here I thought that it can be crafted again and all I need is the blueprints like with every other item in the game. That was not the case. At first, I thought maybe I needed the perk that allows me to craft epic items. Nope, when I got the perk I found out that was a lie. So onto the internet, I go and found a lot more people with the same issue.

The worse part of the game for me is the dodge. It could have been possible to change the inputs to dodge but to have it set to this button is atrocious. To dodge you will have to press the Circle button (Playing on the PS5) twice. The issue is the Circle button is also to crouch. There have been so many instances when I wanted to dodge but the game either refuse to read my inputs or something that I end up crouching instead. I have died so many times this way. It especially sucks because I was playing as a melee-based character so it’s important to have this skill. Eventually, I got tired of it and started shooting. You know what game implemented the dodge mechanic well, Outer Worlds. Instead of setting it to crouch, it was the jump button. It flows way better because you are jumping out of harm’s way.

The developer did not check if any of the mechanics and gameplay work at all. It is clear that they didn’t with useless perks and fight mechanics.

But then after hours of playing it connected. This game is not the game I was wishing for. I wanted something like Outer Worlds, Disco Elysium, or Fallout New Vegas. You know like an actual RPG, instead, I got an Open-World Action Adventure game like Zelda: Breath of the Wild or GTA. As soon as I made that connection the game started to be fun. In the core of it, Cyberpunk 2077 is a fun game but it was not a finished game.