I was put off the game by the incredible negativity in the steam forums and not being able to get a graphics card (mine was OLD and starting to cause crashes), so I decided to wait for the big patch and a new graphics card.
I got lucky and managed to bag a card, bought the game a few days after patch 1.2, and was immediately annoyed at the negative comments because, actually, it's just a really fun game that (now, presumably) runs absolutely fine. There's an incredible amount of detail, an incredible amount of work has clearly gone into the stories, and it's really, really beautiful.
The city is the star of the show and almost 200 hours later almost every time I play I discover a new place I'd never seen before. The other day I just wandered behind some perfectly innocuous-looking buildings out of curiosity and was met by a pileup of corpses in an alleyway, the result of some gangland massacre.
But it's not just exploring I'm enjoying. With a controller (keyboard was awful) I've come to love driving, even if cars stopping in front of you for no reason clearly needs fixing, and just the sheer freedom to mix up play styles. I started as a hacker, got bored and looked at the katana in my inventory and thought "nah, looks boring", gave it a try and suddenly had a new favourite toy. Then came sniper rifles. Then machine guns. Motorbikes became cars became offroaders became pootling around in stolen rubbish trucks. I'm really enjoying the ability to freewheel and play every gig a different way.
Not going to give a full review because haven't finished the main quest.