Finally finished it on PS5. Let me start by saying I was never really hyped by CP, firstly because I'm really not found of the setting. I preordered the game only one week before release, eventhough I was following the game's progress since 2013, because of CDPR and the found memories I have of TW3 (played 800 hours of that). So: no, my disappointment doesn't have much to do with being overhyped. I kept saying that I didn't like the setting and what I've seen in the trailers but I was sure CDPR would pull a quality game...
"We never did a futuristic game in a modern city with verticality, stealth, first-person shooting, bikes and cars and guns, and hacking. We're pros at lengthy RPG with branching storylines. Let's make a huge but short adventure game with a limited amount of choices, shall we?!"
- 70 hours
- 80%~ of quests done, wanted to go back to the game after the end, but couldn't. I don't think I will replay it in the near future, and will wait for every updates and DLC, maybe. The more I think about CP2077 the less I like it; the illusion wears off very fast, once it stops shining in your eyes.
Excellent
- Night City, visually, "organically" - the virtual tour is great. A great variety of assets, places, items, etc.
- characters, and especially weapons and vehicles models: very impressive
- Sound design
- First-person is a really good choice. I don't lack third person at all, the cinematography of some scenes are excellent
Good
- animations
- Music, not my cup of tea at all but fit the setting
- 1/10 of quests
- Well, I didn't expect it, but I thought the game was visually good on the PS5, even before the new-gen patch, and it performs pretty well 90% of the time with decent framerate
Average
- I usually play in english, this time I played in french. V male voice was not really my cup of tea
- Hacking
- Shooting
- 5/10 of quests
- Characters and story
- Night City as a playground. Night City works when you're stuck in awe and when you don't think about it. When you're thinking in "what do they eat" mode (some might recognize what I'm refering to), the city is just an empty shell with no substance. The city as a city doesn't work. Police doesn't work, transportation doesn't exist, services are minimal. You can see a bus in one of the ending, but never once in the game. A train in one of the quest, never again. You're the only one who has a bike permit. NPCs activities are more believable in TW3 and a Ubisoft game than here.
- The writing (and the humor). This game about "the soul" didn't make me laugh or feel something like TW2 or 3 did.
Bad
- 4/10 of quests
- Driving
- Stealth. With this AI it's not really an option
- the game rhythm is all over the place
- way less detail-oriented than TW3. Or full of details I don't care about...
- the game is contemplative when it decides it. If you want to take your time: phone call or blinking shit. Didn't you realize you're destroying the best aspect of your game by making me feel like a mouse on steroids in paradise?
- the game feels very generic sometimes, and repetitive
- crafting
- leveling isn't really satisfying. That was already the case in TW1, TW2, and TW3. Isn't it time to finally do something? Most of the perks (when they work) result in "+%" here and there (and many times it doesn't even work). That's lazy.
- the economy, once again, is all over the place. Already the case in W3. Money is not a problem, but it should be as important as XP when you're playing a merc who needs high-end gears. You need to negociate your contract for instance. You could do it in TW3, why don't you do it even once in CP2077, where it makes a ton of sense?
- open world activities
- too much useless loot... every loot I destroy is a new reason to feel bored and CP is full of "wooden bowls" I didn't want to pick but somehow did.
- Most armor pieces are garbage design wise
- CP2077 could have been very immersive, but there are tons of very lazy design choices breaking it (the minimap for instance)
- boss fights and encounters are generally anti-climatic
- character creation
- I tried to play a character who does not kill if he can. So I incapacited people with the right weapon mods or hacks. Halfway through the game I realized it meant nothing, added nothing to the game at all. So I incapacited people and killed them right after that to get double XP and street cred. Instead of being a RPG it became kind of a chore, a mechanical action.
Atrocious
- three origin stories for... almost nothing
- AI. What a disaster: I choose my build not because I liked it, but because I was sick of having enemies seeing me when they shouldn't and not properly behaving
- UI. Everytime I hack or go into combat, the screen is bloated with colors, informations... Ugly and not very well-thought. You have a beautiful game, don't put filters like that in it...
- menuing. 0 improvement over TW3, the same issues, even worse
- the shadow of V. this feels so, so amateurish. I still can't believe it.
- the game isn't balanced at all. On Normal with a netrunner build, I ended up exterminating entire places with 4 quickhacks. On the other hand I'm glad this works, since I got bored with the gameplay (and the AI) very fast
- the city map. This is the worst city map I've seen in a game, and I've played every Assassin's Creed
- Bugs, of course... I have lost maybe 5 hours because something didn't work, activate or disappear properly
- 30 crashes (logged in my PS5) during a 70 hours playthrough
- where are the branching storylines? where are the choices to make this adventure really my own? How can I roleplay anything in there?
- I don't want to make the breach protocol minigame anymore. Please. Never again. What a silly idea in a 50+ hours long game. That was barely acceptable 10 years ago... What were you thinking... Even Mass Effect 1 acknowledges how bad a hacking minigame is on the long run by having 3 kind of hacking and an option to insta-hack if your tech level is high enough and if you got enough hack material. When you have a beautiful game like that, don't pollute it with such ugly garbage. And I thought the space sudoku in Andromeda was bad. I don't know, even Deus Ex:HR or MD did something better, years ago! How did we went from Gwent to this?
I could add in "Atrocious":
- the 7 years long marketing campaign culminating to "this". At least we have to suffer Bethesda lies only 6 months.
- devs on a deathmarch because CDPR management and direction were delusional
And I'm sure I'm forgetting many little reasons why I didn't like my overall experience. Like: why would I use ricochet bullets? It's not very useful, it doesn't work very well... etc., etc., etc.
Two days after finishing it, and now I'm thinking how good BioWare was, when they went from DnD to Mass Effect (and how good they were with the origins in DA:O...). 15~ years ago, coming from mainly isometric and "turn-based" rpgs, they created their own fascinating lore and setting, they managed to make a functional TPS with mechanics that were new to them, with exactly 1% of the budget CDPR had with CP2077. And I had more good memories exploring empty worlds with a mako 14 years ago than I had exploring the empty beautiful shell that is Night City with my 50 shiny cars that were hell to drive.
I think Fallout 4 and even Andromeda (!) were better games and RPG overall. Exploration in CP2077 sucks. You know what I miss the most? Dungeons-like places, where you don't know what to expect. It works like a charm in TES. I want to explore places, and THEN discover there is a quest (or not) tied to it. I don't want a phone call saying: "Ok, find/kill this dude in this carefully crafted first person shooter map" everytime I approach a map marker...
Cyberpunk completely lacks a sense of depth, surprise and mystery. You always know what you're doing wherever you are, or even before actually getting there (which is: killing or finding someone or something). It's boring, boring, boring. No amount of katanas or ass can save that.
On top of that, I keep thinking that Watch Dogs Legion, a game I couldn't finish, had way better hacking (and driving) (and you can use the spiderbot through the whole game). NPC behaviour and actions were better and more believable in WDL, police reacts better too, AI is vastly superior. Thematically, Watch Dogs Legion, while having terrible writing, explore technology better than Cyberpunk. And WDL is a mediocre game... what does it say about CP77?
You also have a game that is beautiful to look at, and you make us rely on a minimap? It's not 2005 anymore, why not try something like Ghost of Tsushima did? There are tons of design choices in this game that pollutes how good looking this game is sometimes. Once again, the game direction completely lost track of what was the game and the studio's main talents.
I couldn't imagine what they could do with a smaller scope. Look at what Yakuza do with a district only...
So yeah, out of Cyberpunk I got more respect for... Ubisoft, Bethesda and BioWare, despite their recent failures. I even think Mankind Divided wasn't that bad after all... CP77 lacks focus and direction and feels amateurish on so many aspects (the UI, first of all, why couldn't I use a power wheel for hacking for instance? it could have been vastly better).
They managed to make both the best game (TW3) and the biggest disappointment of the past decade. Most of the game issues can't be fixed with patches and updates. It's a 15 years old game with cutting edge visuals. It's like going back to square 1 (Witcher 1) without the magic or the humility and the success. CP77 doesn't improve on TW3 at all. CDPR trademarks is nowhere to be seen; the writing is lazy, the RPG aspect is lacking, the immersion is destroyed. If they couldn't make a game with meaningful choices and branching storyline, they managed to make a beautiful game, and they can't stop having ideas ruining this visual experience... It's like there wasn't anyone who knows what are CDPR talents and what CP77 should be.
In one word: it's a mess.
Another uninterrupted and more romantic sex scene would bring a feeling of closure and would allow to reveal more of her hidden fragile nature, which is what makes her really lovable.
