Just to give a quick overview.
I have pretty much played it nonstop since release and is not very far in the story, pretty much right after Silverhand.
Im playing a nomad and in the first game (lasted 10 minutes, because I didn't like my nails
) Anyway, I noticed quite a few duplicated NPCs often right next to each other. Which seemed pretty weird to be honest.
But restarted as Nomad again and went to check those NPC again and they were different and didn't see any duplicates. So it seems that for the random NPC, they probably just choose from a random pool of characters and sometimes they are duplicates.
And guess it's mostly a problem in less dense populated areas as you will notice it very quickly there.
I feared a lot of crashing and bugs to really ruin the game. But I have to admit, that I really haven't encountered any big ones. I had to reload once because there were some weird red lines all over the screen and think that is pretty much it, at least which I remember.
There are still quite a few graphic bugs, but nothing compared to other newly released games in my opinion and most of them are really not that annoying, once in a while a character might be sitting in mid air, some random clutter floating above the ground. A bit of pop in of characters etc. But again nothing I would say is ruining the experience for me at least.
I am still very confused about there not being a walk button, because your character does occasionally switch to walking automatically, but as with most games it sort of works but you still occasionally get the weird running, when other are walking.
Especially one episode made me laugh, when a character says "V lets walk" and my first thought was that I should have a dialog option saying that "I can't, it's simply not possible, I can hack stuff and do a lot of other crazy things, but walking is not one of them".
But getting all these things out of the way, I have to say that this game is absolutely awesome
And I would suggest playing it on very hard or at least hard (Im not a very good FPS player myself), it doesn't seem that crazy to be honest. Since i don't play a lot of FPS games, I might not be especially into how shooting is suppose to work when being good or bad. But to me at least it works very well, obviously there is some skill linked to how good you are at hitting enemies, but then again its a RPG game, so I really don't get why people find it less than good. I haven't done that much melee, since I decided to go Tech and guns. But from what I have tried, I think it's fine and can easily see how you could make a fun play through focusing on that, it's not just hack and slash, there are some tactics to it, and since the game is fairly fast phased. I don't really see what people would have liked differently. At least to me, it doesn't strike me as a game where you carefully stand one vs one, some enemies use melee weapons while other try to shoot you and at least on very hard you go down fast, so you can't really fool around to much.
The story and the mission so far have been very cool and since I haven't completed it (or even close), its again just my initial impression. It really gets you hook and invested in it.
In regards to adult content, from the reviews it sounded like it was crazy, but personally I have barely seen or noticed it. There are the odd posters, dancers etc. As seen in the trailers. So maybe it depends on each person, but to me, it fits the world and is not really dominating in a weird way.
Driving I actually think work very well, the cars or at least those I have tried are not overly aggressive like in GTA and are fairly easy to get you from A to B, due to that. To me GTA is way to sensitive. So guess that depends on what people like. Same with motorcycles works fine. (I prefer driving in FP, to sort of keep it all in that perspective.)
The UI have a bit clunkiness to it and some weird decision have been made I think. Like you can't quickly eat and drink to buff yourself, you have to go into the inventory, which is a little bit annoying and I think they should add that.
I do a lot of crafting and it seems fine. I do however not agree with some of the reviewers that you have to worry about ammo, it's easily crafted and in huge amounts. So maybe that were changed or maybe the person didn't check the crafting menu.
Healing is a bit spamming or what to say, again might be because I craft a lot. But I am never low on those either.
The city itself as others have mentioned as well is really cool. And it's hard to describe, its just awesome
Music and sound is top notch, nothing really to say here. Easily 10/10. There are some you don't like and some you do, but overall just amazing. The only thing I would probably change is the sound for when you run, it sounds sort of like someone putting their whole foot in the ground, rather than heel first. But again, a very minor thing
My biggest issue with the game so far, is that sometimes there are stuff that are very difficult to pick up and in some cases impossible as it simply doesn't register it, but guess that will be fixed quickly.
Some other things which are minor issues and that I would probably change:
- There are a lot of different foods and drinks, which basically does the same, so it's quite difficult to tell them apart, which seems to kind of add clutter rather than clarity.
- Its a bit annoying that you can't really see which weapons are single, semi or automatic weapons. Same goes with mods and stuff you can add to your weapons, its not clear which mods/augmentations is compatible with which weapons.
As a general thing, if I were CDPR I would probably remove almost all food and drink items from the game that you can randomly loot. There is so much of it that it makes it pointless to buy.
And as a sort of final note before initial score
Is that adding modding to the game, could make it an absolutely gem amongst games, like the Skyrim of Cyberpunk. Because it would allow modders to add all the minor details that would make Night city absolutely insane.
But as the game stands now and taking into consideration that nothing is perfect. This game is easily 10/10 for me if the story keeps up. Even if it doesn't I don't think it deserves anything less than 9/10, unless the story really fails.
Sure it have the odd glitches and bugs etc. But at least from my experiencing, nothing compared to how games from a lot of the other AAA studios release them at the moment, this is one hell of a game. And the hype is absolutely deserved in my opinion.
