I have over 200 hours into playing Cyberpunk 2077 on Steam. I was there in the beginning and took every patch they made till today. I played the game twice. The first playthrough with version 1.0 the second one I started with 1.3 till today. I loved The Witcher game series (same company); Mass Effect (Trilogy); Baldurs Gate and other critically acclaimed RPGs.

And I still can’t take the game seriously.

I tried it very hard, but it is not a good RPG. Don’t get me wrong it has BIG potential and outstanding artstyle. But sadly they never used it to its fully.

Positive

I tried 😅

Quests / Missions / Encounters

• Mainstory captures the cyberpunk issue with society and capitalism pretty well. I really like how they portrait artifical intelligence and its limits. Not like some “magic” that is happening when AI is mentioned in other games or movies.
• Interesting characters. Even on sidequests. “Guy with the dick problem” my all time favorite!

Graphic / Artstyle

• Worldbuilding is fantastic! So much details and it looks like every building is unique. And even at night with all the neon lights.Outstanding!
• Facial animation is very good. Even little twerks like winking are a suprise which fits perfectly to the character.
• Every driveable car has a detail rich interior which serves some functionality (like showing the speed) or welcoming you in japanese.
• Game is even prettier with RayTracing especially at nighttime.

Immersion / Storytelling

• In a lot of areas there is always something going on. Like NPCs who are talking to each other, cats eating catfood, tram will rush right above you or music suddenly blasting from a non-interactive shop when walking by.
• A lot of little text readings to learn more about the world of Cyberpunk.
• A lot of pretty well made ads and jingles (video and audio) are playing constantly around you on different media channels. “Hate that meat…”
• Some areas telling a good story about the people who are living there. Example:
  • You will see people peeing on every corner in slums.
  • Everything is tidly clean on high-earning areas.
  • Outside the city you feel very lonely
  • One whole area is build but quickly abandond and it shows. Broken mechanical things like billboards or weapon systems, fires that spread widely and dead bodies lying around.

Design / Gameplay

• Some AI traffic drivers will make space for you if you are fullspeed approaching. Nice detail!
• Screenshot mode! Yay!

Sound

• Some music tracks are well choosen and fitting the Cyberpunk style perfectly.
• Weapon sound pretty good and fits especially on big guns.
• Environment sounds fits perfectly the area you are in.

Performance

• Runs okay, even with DLSS on 4K if you don’t use RayTracing.
• Only one crash occured.

Negative

Anything which bothers me which I still encounter till patch 1.61.

Quests / Missions / Encounters

• A lot of sidequests feel cut short to likely save development time. They all lack of details where detail is needed to satisfy your inner curiosity.
• Why is female V grooling on River altough she just helped him out on some family stuff and didn’t sleept with him?
• The “bonus” you get when you playing and finished some sidequest like text messages sometimes are very cheaply made. Example:
  • The picture Joss sends you looks way to artificial. Like from a 3D S*xvilla game and is so badly put together. You cannot mix a real photo from a teddy bear which is clearly cut out with photoshop with a dude standing on the side starring into the distance. That’s a get well soon family foto not a horror story from a newspaper where the victim killed the whole family soon after.

Graphic / Artstyle

• Streetmarkings on Crossroads are blinking when moving the camera like someone forget to put the correct Z value in so they overlap with the streettexture
• Open the map and close it you will see often wrong environment lightning coming from all over the place. It dissapears if the camera is moved out and in into the viewpoint of the issue.
• Sometimes the stitching from the neck and where the body begins is glitching heavenly when in a cutscene and a facial animation is beeing played. Not happening that much though but still annoying.
• Missing objects like poles from streetlights when driving or moving fast. Results are hovering streetheads which emits lightning.

Immersion / Storytelling

• I can live without flying a car. But why is there no explanation why I cannot?
• Traffic spawning visible when they get into the viewport and “hopping” while spawned on the road.
• Slow walking (via hotkey) will be automatically disabled again if you pass certain, maybe script relevant, locations or shops. This feature got added in a patch but is still half-baked.
• People will spawn into each other. Example:
  • Always two dudes sitting on the same chair in the nightclub. One of them you can talk to because of some side quest.
• All streetlights are going to go on green if you are nearing.
• Car radio is just a bunch of audio files cut onto each other. Also the host said it is a sunny day while driving at night.
• Car physics and controlling (mouse and keyboard) are a joke.
• Ragdoll physics are a joke also.
  • If you drive to a pedestrian without hitting him he turns into a ragdoll with no weight attached.
  • If you hit pedestrians they fling like little barbie dolls around.
• You cannot drive with the traffic flow like a good citizen. Sometimes the AI drivers will suddenly stop on roads like the pathfinding crashed on them or they hit the maximum path length they can travel.
• Clearly a lot of scripted events which are not good disguised. Example:
  • Doing sidequest which involves street racing. You can clearly see via minimap that the opponents have such poor AI pathfinding they regulary spawn in zick zack somewhere behind you if you are first place. You can see the spastic also while your passenger is aiming at them out of the window.
  • That truck that you can see miles aways standing there is right pushing full on the pedal when you near him so he can fullspeed ram into you.
  • That street work that happens right into a mission? Prepare to never seen something like that again in freeroam.
• Why on earth will be the camera reset everytime while driving if I look around? I get it that it is for convienence with controller-inputs but annoying and not necessary with mouse and keyboard. I want to see all the pretty buildings even from the first-person view.

Design / Gameplay

• Shooting at people feels like you are hitting paper. No real feedback happening. Same when slashing through your enemies with knifes and swords.
• I can’t really say why but the barehand fighting is not responsive either.
• Why is the minimap still not reacting on how fast you are driving? You can’t catch the next intersection if the map is not zooming out on fullspeed.

Sound

• Playing with Dolby Atmos results in an annoying issue when be in a parked car and vibing to the music on the radio. After some time it gets muffled like you are standing outside and the cars window are closed.
• Annoying crackling in every sound when playing in higher bitrate.
• You cannot turn off the battle music which sometimes plays because of a failed script or an invisible battle is going on.
• Some finishers still don’t have sound or are not fitting at all.

Performance

• Open Map while in busy street dumps the frames heavenly for a certain time. It looks like the whole map is rendered again, just to be visible from above.
• Scripts are heavenly tied to your FPS. If your FPS are tanking in a stressfull situation you see sometimes that scripts will have issues executing (like turning off battle music; spawning enemies etc.)

I have called out many negative, for me immersion breaking, stuff which leads to the conclusion why I can’t recommend the game. But many of them are available since 1.0 and STILL not fixed. And don’t come with me with “but it is like operating on an open heart which envolves the RED engine.” Hello Games put so much love into No Mans Sky after they had such a miserable launch and now its such a massive game that even could get a lot of money by seeling DLCs if they would. They sure had also a shitty engine. Heck even CD Project RED did the same thing with The Witcher.

If you encounter something that is not quite right you will always have the “it will be a bug” mindset because of the clearly visible and often found issues mentioned above. All of this have also the feeling that anything in the game is a half-baked feature. That’s the reason why I cannot understand that the game has won the “Long standing and love from developers” award on Steam.

I really wanted to avoid the comparision from The Witcher 3, which came from the same developers. But nothing in Cyberpunk 2077 had me emotional hit like the Red Baron sidequest(!).