I enjoyed it playing it at the time, but looking back at it, it has many issues.
Writing: I would say the writing itself isn't that good, its serviceable but it tries too hard to be punk, the dialogue between characters doesnt feel natural at all, its very deliberate into punk language feels too artificial. Aside from the dialogue being unnatural, it also has less meaningful choices to pick than what i expected. The story itself is fine, its engaging enough to make me care and i had fun with the main campaign, but i felt it was very rushed.. the arc with Jackie was very rushed and we barely got to know him instead we get flashbacks and we are supposed to care for him as if he was our bro. Johnny was insufferable to me but thats probably his character trait, i thought he was annoying and too try hard to be a punk commenting on everything with fuck that and fuck this, comes off as a punk that is newbie and is trying too hard compared to true veteran punk which supposed to have learned more and matured more. lol I dont know maybe im being unfair but his character was mediocre, the performance of Keanu was mid as well. The rest of the characters are pretty good i suppose.
To cut short cause i dont want to review the game right now, but i think the worldbuilding was decent enough but among the weakest in the cyberpunk genre, it contains a lot of stereotypes and outdated ideas, the characters are the best part, the story is good, and the side quests are also good.
The gameplay is pretty simple you have shooting, driving, hacking and the rest of the stuff which falls into rpg mechanics, the shooting i would say is pretty good, the guns feel satisfying to use and their design and sound are excellent, the driving is awful, the hacking is very simple and relies on one minigame only. I wanted more indepth skill tree and rpg mechanics system, after all the possibilities here are insane but CDPR didnt deliver that and instead tried to copy a Witcher-like system into it, which doesnt work here contrary to their previous game, here its character creator system you can specialize into different builds yet it feels you can only truly go hacking or combat, the specialization itself is which weapons do you want to use and the skills you unlock are super lame, look for Dishonored and Prey on how to handle a skill tree system. The cyberware is a neat idea but could have expanded upon even further.
Overall i would say the gameplay is decent but leaves a lot to be desired, the combat in particular is halfway good, cause you have plenty of cool weapons to use, but the enemies are all basic and boring, you have humans (gangsters) and some robots and thats it, you have some bosses too but they are even worse than W3 main bosses which is baffling cause you had 8 years and even more budget to flesh them out, compared to W3 DLC bosses they are so bad too which is a shame. The only boss that stands out is Oda, Smasher is probably one of the most underwhelming bosses ever. Watching the anime and then fighting him in the game is laughable.
Level Design is pretty good, not on the level of immersive sim games but for an open world game it does have great scale and each gig has its own mini-level which has multiple paths and good layout so i think at this particular aspect they did well.
Art direction is fantastic, CDPR art team is very talented, the city looks good and the visuals between different districts are super well handled, same goes for the Soundtrack which is pretty good too.
I won't talk about bugs and performance as thats a whole different subject.
One thing i hated in the game was the constant calls, the how the gigs and side quests are handled, compared to W3 contracts it feels a downgrade, for example you are walking near a location you receive a call from a fixer and then you "READ" a message then you do the contract and how do you learn about the gig and its story? its through reading lame shards, those shards are so boring and have annoying voices that i stopped caring about their mini stories, compare that to W3 contract where it feels more natural and authentic as you are traveling the world doing a main story and then you stumble upon a village, read a notice board someone needs help you go there meet in person and you watch a cutscene that fleshes the premise of the mini-story and tells you about whats happening, in this way you feel more connected to the world and its characters surrounding you, this makes the quest more immersive.
Also the open world itself, it needed more content, its a futuristic city and should have more depth in its interactions and not just worldbuilding, unlike W3, here its not a medieval village where people tend to their chores and fight monsters, here its supposed to be peak consumerism so i expect many activities throughout the city to be available to the player, sadly there was nothing to do except go from a gig to another gig, and the only thing they added later was a minigame with roach. I guess im not the kind to gosh about minigames, i dont really care about them but i think there should have been more interactions and content in the city, whether its like Yakuza (i dont like this series) or Bethesda (lockpicking, messing around with different skills) or Rockstar (chores and basic minigames) kind of content would probably serve the world better, it didnt bother me that much personally as i said i dont really invest in minigames but i think in a game like Cyberpunk they add more value cause the main game itself is pretty lackluster when you think about it, so additions like that could have filled the void for many people.
For me personally? i dont think those minigames are needed, you know why? because i think the open world itself wasn't needed. lol.
Despite all those issues i had fun, if i had to rate the game i would rate it 3/5. It's a decent game but suffers from many issues a massive stepback from Witcher 3. CDPR hyped this game a lot, or perhaps they liked the hype and decided to capitalize on it and ride along, in the end it backfired on them, 2.5 years later and the game is kind of stable but the content is still the same, i played it on day 1, and after i finished it i never played again except when they added the apartments, i will come back for the expansion.
![L*][*N*K](/data/avatars/m/842/842515.jpg?1696510303){kind=avatar}
