Cyberpunk 2077 Review
The game is like watching a masterpiece movie, but it cuts to a 5 minute adbreak once an hour. 10/10 story, 10/10 (spectacular) visions and art design, 10/10 open world design. The actual story and presentation are phenomenal, but then there are entire elements in the game that are consistently done poorly with a few (albeit minor) parts where it doesn't even feel like they tried.
For instance, the actual sidequests are either 10/10 thought provoking masterpieces or are GTA III tier "uhh, go to this building, kill this guy/steal this thing/kill everyone in this room." Not inherently bad, but offputting when The Witcher III skewed far heavier towards the former category.
Actual gameplay is great, but it really is just Far Cry-style combat, with lite-Deus Ex immersive sim stuff thrown in. The levels are phenomenally designed --like immersive sims-- to the extent that even the most minor side-gigs are better designed than some AAA game levels. It's a pity because the enemy variety completely deflates this game's phenomenal design. Outside of the occasional enemy netrunner, they're just meatsacks waiting to be killed. At the end of the game, you actually start running into cool enemy classes like cyberninjas that have cool attacks. Baffling that none of this stuff is in the other 90% of the game. Wish they'd lean into the immersive sim/RPG stuff and lean away from first-person shooter gun stuff.
A weird side effect of this is that, while I'm knocking how light the RPG stuff is, the actual character speccing, perks and progression are great! The builds you can create with cybernetics and body mods mean there are an endless number of builds that drastically alter how you can play. Emphasis on *can play,* because since there's no real enemy variety, the game rarely has the actual mechanical depth or enemy variety to reward unique builds outside of the odd skill-check.
The story is completely phenomenal. This isn't a retread of things you've experienced in past Cyberpunk media, although it borrows generously from them. If you were afraid this would just be an unbranded Blade Runner game with synthwave music hacked in, don't be. Everything about the game, world, story and lore feels like it was written from scratch. It's beautifully cohesive and immersive specifically for this. Characters behave like people who are rationally reacting to their various conundrums within this society. You can clearly see how even the villains' actions are pretty logical considering their experiences and outlook on this world.
The story plays with hard science fiction elements but is incredibly smart about leaving them in the background. The player is always experiencing their consequences and complexities the way a normal person in the real world would. There's no techno-babble unless you're talking to a techy character where it makes sense. The actual problems you deal with are always deeply human ones that are consequences of the science-fiction world. You never end up with blunt, on-the-nose Black Mirror style conundrums where it's as simple as "What if futuristic thing were bad?" This is just excellently written science fiction.
The core story with Arasaka and Johnny Silverhand is excellent. It's extremely focused and has a core premise draped in mystery that's wound around complications. Characters act in their own self-interest, but that also means they frequently act in ways they think are correct. The most empathetic character is acting purely out of honor and is a very wise and noble guy, but he's doing so to the ends of something that's probably not so great. The main villain is very dishonorable, sneaky, backstabbing guy who does evil things, but could be a hero to someone from a different POV. Johnny Silverhand is the exemplar of this. He's a guy with clear-cut, unflinching convictions that happen to be extremely wrong in many ways, many of which are actually really evil from a normal person's perspective. The game very fairly calls him out on his own BS while pointing out that his view on the world isn't entirely wrong. In a way, he's the counter to the game's moral relativism. He died a hero in his own story, and now that he's resurrected, a lot of his rationale falls apart when the consequences play out on a long enough timeline. There’s an incredible branch of this story where you observe the lives of his former band-mates who actually had to live out the consequences of Johnny’s life.
By the end, you've unraveled a phenomenal, sweeping neo-noire story where no one really knows everything, and is trying to piece together their understanding of this beautifully complex techo hellscape in the best way they know how. The game will never hand you the explicit truth, but it'll let you grab glances of it through the perspectives of the characters you meet. It's worth trying multiple playthroughs from each origin-type just to experience this story from more angles. It's great Cyberpunk that never lets the player be the most interesting or important person in the room they're in. Let yourself get lost in it.
It's easy to get annoyed by some stuff in this game, and then you have moments where you slice through 30 armoured Arasaka soldiers in slow-motion with a katana, skewer an entire Mexican gang with electric mantis blades or spend an hour traversing all of Night City by parkouring across 20-story rooftops, ledges and billboards...and then you think this is the greatest thing you've ever played. The game is absurdly fun if you master it, and it's fun in so many unique and varied ways.
If CDPR plan on making a sequel anytime soon: The actual core of this game is excellent. Just stop trying to do the parts that aren't good. Double down on the core competencies, ramp up the immersive sim stuff, minimize the first-person shooter stuff, put some of the cybernetics/perks system's complexity into the *actual gear* and then write another story as good as the one you wrote here. For all this game's problems, it really does blow away its competition in so many regards that it's worth experiencing.