"Cyberpunk 2077" Messy, Yet Great All the Same

 

    I mean look, I've heard about this game for so long, I've wanted to play it for so long, so to finally have the chance to play it, it was tantalizing. But now that I've played it, I don't know what to make of it. That's not to say I thought Cyberpunk 2077 was a bad game, nor that I won't play a sequel, but this game felt less polished/cohesive than I would have thought from CDPR say compared to The Witcher 3. I mean this game is certainly getting at least an 80 from me, that's for sure, but does it belong in my pantheon of greatest open-world RPG's of all time? It's hard to say, so let's talk about it.

    The first thing I need to get out of the way is that the current iteration of Cyberpunk 2077, so post 2.0 with the Phantom Liberty DLC is basically two different versions of the game stitched to each other.  What I mean by this is that you'll see a lot of guides reference older versions of the game, and there are a lot of mechanics that might have been useful at first, but are pretty meaningless at this point. The perfect example for this would be the clothes system which is just an absolute mess. Did you know that you could dismantle clothes for materials, but you could still wear them? That's because there's something known as the wardrobe, which lets you change your appearance visually, while letting you wear any clothes you want. The catch? Ever since they overhauled clothing/armor the stats on your clothes largely don't matter anymore. There aren't any mods you can apply to them, the statistical boosts are so miniscule, so I just ended up wearing mismatched bits and pieces from all of the iconic sets. 

    On the topic of dead branches left in the game, I'd largely say the same for the crafting system. While you can craft iconic weapons, and even regular weapons, there's not much to do. You can ignore pretty much everything you craft, like immediately. You get plenty of unique enough iconics that you never really feel the need to delve into any of the "regular" guns, and you just end up spending all of your material upgrading them anyways. That's not to say I'm annoyed the game still has crafting in the game, it was useful by the end when I needed to do a little top off on ammo while storming Arasaka tower, but it's once again one of those aspects of the game that has clearly become deprioritized, and it can be a little weird exploring the menu and trying to figure out what you can safely ignore and what you need.

    My last big complaint is probably that the game could have been slightly harder? I mean I played it on normal thinking it'd be "average" difficulty, but it really wasn't. I completely ignored grenades for 90% of the game, and only started using them by the end because I remembered there were perks to help with it. The perk tree is cool, and I'm glad they let you reset it, but also like realistically I would say cyberware is more important than perks (specifically double jump which feels like a necessity). I didn't even know there were two kinds of healing items, you just kind of pick up everything and the game tells you it's been upgraded and you go cool. I will say I could feel vulnerable/mortal either fighting maxtac for the mantis blades, or in the Don't Fear the Reaper Ending. Even if I had to redo the last bit because Adam Smasher glitched me into a wall,  I genuinely was running for my life knowing my health was quickly deteriorating, and that to die would mean the end of my playthrough as I desperately avoided all of his explosions. 

    Two other small gripes is that autodrive is terrible, like laughably bad. I don't get it at all man. The first time I used autodrive it immediately proceeded to drive itself into both a cop and a pedestrian, causing it to disable itself and force me to run away for like a good minute. Every other time it was just faster to take control yourself because it also really struggles with turns. I guess it's accurate to real life, but also I could replicate the driving into police officers thing pretty regularly. And I kind of wish gigs started off in a different way. In their current form you just go close to an area, and a fixer calls you giving you detes. Don't get me wrong, this is not an indicmtnent on the quality or content of the gigs themselves, rather how they are initiated.

    I just wish characters got to know the fixers better as characters. I mean Regina gets 20+ gigs and poor Dino gets 5 gigs. It was really disorienting driving through the city on my first playthrough to go meet Panam for a main quest and become bombarded with calls by fixers telling me about how they're the boss of this part of town. I think meeting with fixers before seeing any potential gigs pop up would have helped force players to get to know them better. Especially because you can never meet them until the very end when it's time to pick up a reward. I will say some of the fixers I did grow to enjoy though.

    My favourite fixer was definitely Muamar Reyes, not just because he has about the ugliest haircut I've ever seen but he does actually seem quite easy going/a decent fellow. Rogue might have been the most half-baked in terms of gigs she gets you. They're just random gigs, but there seems to be no quest getting to know her/involving her. Since she is known as the head fixer of the city I would have loved her to personally call you for gigs every time you street cred reached a certain level or something, maybe culminating in a reward like with every other fixer. Of course, I understand players already interact with her anyways as a result of the main story but still.

    I will say though, I do appreciate the game's approach to making it feel like a real role playing game. Your actions do in fact indeed matter in this game. Sometimes you'll be doing a quest, and you'll be able to have a unique action because of the lifepath you took, or the actions you took in some quest you did like 30 hours ago that you've forgotten.  Of course, I say all of this understanding that there are like 5(?) or 6(?) endings to the game, and all of them feel decently fleshed out. I will say the Star or the Sun endings feel the most satisfying, but they actually fleshed out each ending a decent bit so you don't feel like you should have chosen any particular ending.

    I also enjoyed the setting. Reading random data shards, listening to the little tidbits in the first loading screen. Despite only taking place in one city, Night City felt vibrant and large. It never really felt old, and if you do enough quests you really are going all over the city trying to make ae name for yourself. And despite taking place in the same city Phantom Liberty felt like a whole new area, but also like it always fit in. Which I know sounds dumb because it is an expansion that technically takes place in the same city, but it was a refreshing little side-bar right before I finished the very end of the game, and I loved doing both endings, learning to interact with Alex, Reed and Songbird. 

    The game also just feels futuristic. Say what you will about the polish of the game, but CDPR really nailed down the atmosphere. Whether it's smart weapons being able to track down enemies, or being able to quickhack practically anything and everything for stealth, you really do feel like you are fighting enemies in a different class. There are plenty of ways to do quests, and fight enemies, and it only gets old if you decide to stick to the same couple of tried and true methods you've developed.

Final Score: 88/100

    Maybe my score should be higher. I did just play it for 150 hours. But I also played Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, and I felt like it was a decent bit more polished than this one. I'm not saying I ran into a bunch of bugs or anything playing Cyberpunk, but it just has a lot. Having all of these features sounds cool in theory, but in practice you end up leaving much of it to the wayside to focus on core features. Like there are vendors, but I don't think I ever felt the need to buy anything from any of them, ever. I only ever spent my money on buying iconic weapons that couldn't be acquired any other way, houses, or by the end I started throwing all of my money on cars. At the beginning I really had more money than sense, then I started buying cyberware and promptly became broke again. That is the life in Night City though, and I do hope I revisit the world of Cyberpunk soon, perhaps this time with developers much more equipped/aware of what works and what won't.