This is going to be long text and just my personal opinion. I really tried to keep my expectations with this game realistic. I really didn't expect a perfect game. But I have played for about 30 hours now and damn it's pretty disappointing in general, just a mediocre shooter. And I am hardly the only one who thinks that. For starters, I want to say that I think the main story is great, and easily the best part about the entire game along with the sound design and music. Really the only thing worth playing it for.
The character creator? like what happened?
There is almost no way to customize your body or face except for a few simple options. I mean yay for genitals but that's it. Even demon souls have a deeper character creator than this. is especially Ironic since there is a text at the top of the character creator telling you that appearance is everything in this world or something like that. This leads to an even funnier point that they don't even have hairdressers or plastic surgeons in the year 2077. For a game all about appearance and style, you would think they would at least have hairdressers.
The game on pc at 2k ultra looks mostly good, runs decent, and has plenty of atmospheres. But boy does it vary from area to area. Not to mention bugs and clip-ins galore. But while the city is bustling with life it also feels dead. You cant really live yourself into the city. Walk around and eat food from a stand or sit and drink at a bar for a while drinking and watching strippers or something. The game is heavy on atmosphere and life but is missing all the details which make a city feel alive. The game also has severe problems with NPC's not having any substance. I recall them talking about oh there would be 100's or even 1000s of NPCs that would be unique and cool with their own dynamic lives in the bustling city. I mean yeah there is a lot of NPCs in certain streets but they don't really do anything but walk and stand around. Occasionally you hear some amusing dialogue or the cops bust someone but that's about it.
Side jobs are for the most part just your boring cookie-cutter jobs like in most "RPG" and open-world games. Save someone here, kill someone here, collect item here. Sometimes there are some interesting side jobs with fun characters or rewards but they still have the same old formulas like the other side jobs.
But the worst part of all that really kills the game for me is the very simple gameplay loop over and over again which again is not new to current-day open-world games or RPGs. Sure the game has hacking, stealth, melee, gunplay, and cyberware for your body. This is cool at the start of the game and the first few hours, but as you progress you realize just how shallow and boring all of it really is. All of the combat, stealth, and hacking is like a budget version of Deus Ex. Fair enough not exactly the same type of game but that still doesn't disapprove my point that for example, the stealth in Deus ex is way more varied and interesting in the way you can hack and take down your enemies.
Stealth in this game and its entire skill tree is useless and boring. You only really have two options and that is to either sneak up and break their necks or choke them. What happened with the awesome stealth-like kills and distant wire hacking we saw in previous gameplay by using the awesome cyberware like mantis blades or the wire? They removed the special kills from them completely and they are just basic melee weapons. Not to mention the cyberware which flavour text says you can force open doors. It doesn't, you just need a high body stat. You might as well use the katana or any other melee weapon. Melee however also just suffers from the same problem, Lack of variation. All the melee weapons just have the same boring combos over and over with the same boring kill animations. Not to mention the melee combat, in general, is all-around quite clunky. Didn't they promise to fix that before release? Looks the same to me.
Hacking sure adds a few interesting elements to the gameplay. I've tried at least 15+ of them and for the most part, I think the hacks are pretty boring. They don't really do anything special. It really just boils down to damage the enemy or slightly inconvenience them. Maybe I just haven't found the interesting ones yet?
That brings us to the only strong part about the gameplay and that is the shooting part. I mean it's just like playing a really good FPS. But that's it.
They honestly should have just made the game a pure cyberpunk FPS with a more linear story and less or maybe even no open world. Considering how many flaws this game has that actually might have made it better. Especially since the story is the strong part. Feels like almost every single big game released this day has to be an open-world game with generic gameplay and jampacked with cookie-cutter side missions and collectibles.
Most critics seem to give the game a raving score and I cant seem to understand why. Same with the raving reviews on steam with a lot of people claiming that the game will be better over time as they add more things and maybe even add the missing things. But that just means the game wasn't finished to start with, how in the world is that a good thing? If I buy a game I expect it to be finished except for story-related DLC and such, not that I have to wait for months or even years for them to perfect a game that should already be done. Witcher 3 suffered from a similar problem at the start. If the game is not done, then don't release it. It's that damn simple.
But hey this is just one silly person's opinion. You can love and enjoy the game as much as you want. But for me, it's just another overhyped and disappointing game that could have been so much more. I will even go as far as to say that it's a very Bethesda-like move to overhype and promise so many things and release a game without half of em. Just look at the 2018 cyberpunk world and gameplay. Then compare it to the game from 5 months ago or from now. It's ridiculous.
Oh and all of this disappointment is on pc. I can't even imagine how disappointing this game is for the people who play it on last-gen consoles considering the number of problems it has.
The character creator? like what happened?
There is almost no way to customize your body or face except for a few simple options. I mean yay for genitals but that's it. Even demon souls have a deeper character creator than this. is especially Ironic since there is a text at the top of the character creator telling you that appearance is everything in this world or something like that. This leads to an even funnier point that they don't even have hairdressers or plastic surgeons in the year 2077. For a game all about appearance and style, you would think they would at least have hairdressers.
The game on pc at 2k ultra looks mostly good, runs decent, and has plenty of atmospheres. But boy does it vary from area to area. Not to mention bugs and clip-ins galore. But while the city is bustling with life it also feels dead. You cant really live yourself into the city. Walk around and eat food from a stand or sit and drink at a bar for a while drinking and watching strippers or something. The game is heavy on atmosphere and life but is missing all the details which make a city feel alive. The game also has severe problems with NPC's not having any substance. I recall them talking about oh there would be 100's or even 1000s of NPCs that would be unique and cool with their own dynamic lives in the bustling city. I mean yeah there is a lot of NPCs in certain streets but they don't really do anything but walk and stand around. Occasionally you hear some amusing dialogue or the cops bust someone but that's about it.
Side jobs are for the most part just your boring cookie-cutter jobs like in most "RPG" and open-world games. Save someone here, kill someone here, collect item here. Sometimes there are some interesting side jobs with fun characters or rewards but they still have the same old formulas like the other side jobs.
But the worst part of all that really kills the game for me is the very simple gameplay loop over and over again which again is not new to current-day open-world games or RPGs. Sure the game has hacking, stealth, melee, gunplay, and cyberware for your body. This is cool at the start of the game and the first few hours, but as you progress you realize just how shallow and boring all of it really is. All of the combat, stealth, and hacking is like a budget version of Deus Ex. Fair enough not exactly the same type of game but that still doesn't disapprove my point that for example, the stealth in Deus ex is way more varied and interesting in the way you can hack and take down your enemies.
Stealth in this game and its entire skill tree is useless and boring. You only really have two options and that is to either sneak up and break their necks or choke them. What happened with the awesome stealth-like kills and distant wire hacking we saw in previous gameplay by using the awesome cyberware like mantis blades or the wire? They removed the special kills from them completely and they are just basic melee weapons. Not to mention the cyberware which flavour text says you can force open doors. It doesn't, you just need a high body stat. You might as well use the katana or any other melee weapon. Melee however also just suffers from the same problem, Lack of variation. All the melee weapons just have the same boring combos over and over with the same boring kill animations. Not to mention the melee combat, in general, is all-around quite clunky. Didn't they promise to fix that before release? Looks the same to me.
Hacking sure adds a few interesting elements to the gameplay. I've tried at least 15+ of them and for the most part, I think the hacks are pretty boring. They don't really do anything special. It really just boils down to damage the enemy or slightly inconvenience them. Maybe I just haven't found the interesting ones yet?
That brings us to the only strong part about the gameplay and that is the shooting part. I mean it's just like playing a really good FPS. But that's it.
They honestly should have just made the game a pure cyberpunk FPS with a more linear story and less or maybe even no open world. Considering how many flaws this game has that actually might have made it better. Especially since the story is the strong part. Feels like almost every single big game released this day has to be an open-world game with generic gameplay and jampacked with cookie-cutter side missions and collectibles.
Most critics seem to give the game a raving score and I cant seem to understand why. Same with the raving reviews on steam with a lot of people claiming that the game will be better over time as they add more things and maybe even add the missing things. But that just means the game wasn't finished to start with, how in the world is that a good thing? If I buy a game I expect it to be finished except for story-related DLC and such, not that I have to wait for months or even years for them to perfect a game that should already be done. Witcher 3 suffered from a similar problem at the start. If the game is not done, then don't release it. It's that damn simple.
But hey this is just one silly person's opinion. You can love and enjoy the game as much as you want. But for me, it's just another overhyped and disappointing game that could have been so much more. I will even go as far as to say that it's a very Bethesda-like move to overhype and promise so many things and release a game without half of em. Just look at the 2018 cyberpunk world and gameplay. Then compare it to the game from 5 months ago or from now. It's ridiculous.
Oh and all of this disappointment is on pc. I can't even imagine how disappointing this game is for the people who play it on last-gen consoles considering the number of problems it has.
