Update 9/27 – Patch has new changes and content. Everyone is back

This is definitely (after they patched it a bunch) one of my top 10 favorite games of all time. I cannot stop playing. It appeals to my OCD style of gameplay where I do every mission or side mission in the game. Even the collecting isn’t that bad because it gives you directions on where to go once you right-click on the item on the map. 

TIP: Don’t use the emergency brake, use the S key to brake. They seem to want you to combo braking and letting off the accelerator to control the out-of-control cars. 

Game Pros

• World & Atmosphere, decorations
• Graphics 
• Missions and plenty of side missions
• Combat is fun!
• Lots of things to upgrade from what you’re wearing to individual gear. There’s a whole implant system with rarities to upgrade. 
• Fun attribute system and perk system that do lots of fun things that improve your play and the game. You can’t wait to upgrade or earn something to see what it does. When you get bored you can get into a new tree and try things out and change your gameplay
• Con: It was confusing figuring out to hold F on an attribute to raise it. I played for many hours before spending any due to that confusion. 
• They fixed most of the bugs, only experienced a few minor ones
• Love how you can just ignore all the stealth and go in guns blazing while the NPCS complain at the end of your mission most of the time and give you less money in rewards. 
• Lots of story choices that add to replayability (or watch on youtube)
• Voice acting by the character I created AND Keanu is incredible
• Game will have an expansion / DLC a year or two later. 
• NPCS look really good, but sometimes they bug out and there are (3) of the same people together haha

Game Cons

• Music is SOSO. It’s original but nothing spectacular. After GTA/Rock Band/Guitar hero/Just Dance stole all the songs, no games can have decent music anymore. 
• Not up to GTA level of car play and cops/pedestrians
• Only about 60 hours of gameplay vs. some other games that are 100-450 hours.
• No reason to really buy any of the housing except for how cool they look
• No reason to buy 80% of the cars

Adult Warning
There are a good 5 times where your character is naked and another scene where you’re watching a long sex scene with Keanu and a bottomless chick. Haha. That’s why I make my characters hot chicks, just in case. Haha. 

World

This was the most amazing game world I’ve ever seen. Imagine going back to the 1980s and telling people about this world you’d get to play in the year 2020. I should replay Saint’s Row 2-3 to compare. They have city sections and a lot of vertical content accessed via roads, ramps, or elevators. It’s incredible. You can be in the same building but be in all sorts of different areas with missions yet still be in the same building. 

The graphics are incredible as well as all holograms, advertisements, map decorations, etc. 

They have a whole team just making advertisements in the game. Some are gross but some are hilarious. The NPCs also just talk about random things. They really captured the cyberpunk world of the future. They also did a good job with the level of trash that would exist in a city like this. Giant dumps outside the city. Hah. It’s really hard navigating over the junk though. 

Story Missions
Most original and fun missions I’ve seen besides some in Saint’s Row or classic GTAs. The single-player is full of choices letting you replay making different characters and choices. 

Con: not incredibly clear when you’re making a big story choice in the dialog.

Bug: people call you at the same time it’s trying to give you a mission talk

What really sells it is the voice actress for my selected character (more available) + the performances by Keanu. I was doing a mission that went 1+ hour before being completed. I’ve never experienced that before. It’s almost never that I’m able to suspend belief in a game mission where I don’t recognize that I’m in a game and actually care what is going on but they managed to achieve it.

They manage to convince you to care about story characters that die which I’ve also never experienced except in Red Dead Redemption 2. 

Pro: characters whine and complain when you make story choices they don’t like. Haha 

Side Missions
Most insane amount of side missions I’ve ever seen. I’ve spent 20 hours just on 2 little sections of the city doing all of them. Overall, I did every side thing.  

• Special side story missions
• Pretend to be a cop and clean up the bad guys missions (NPD)
• Racing (standard in GTA)
• Housing (standard in GTA)
• Car Purchases (pointless)
• Collection Items
• Crazy Cyborg missions

Keanu Reeves
Absolute best implementation of integrating a celebrity into a game I’ve ever seen other than just playing as the celebrity. I’ll try to not spoil it. He did a great acting performance too. 

Phone / Texting
Way better implementation than the GTA. Just hold down T to call then hit tab to switch to text messaging.

Con: The people INSTANTLY respond to text messages, in a way where they couldn’t possibly type a response that fast. While that’s great for convenience it ruins the experience a little because of its unbelievability. 

Con: as the messages fill up, it becomes a chore to find the right message because there are so many on the menu tree.

Cars & Driving
It’s certainly better than any non-GTA game, but very horrible when compared to GTA (San Andreas & GTA V). I was thinking maybe they didn’t spend a lot of time on it because they wanted the focus to be on the world, on foot combat, or missions.

• NO reason to buy cars when you can just steal them. I can steal these super-fast cars and use them forever, why would I spend money to buy a crappier car?
• Cars just fishtail back and forth, difficult to control
• Car spins out way too easily as you try to stop or turn a corner. You’re always spinning out. I’ve never spun out so many times in any GTA or even all of them combined together. Even GTA IV had horrible driving. 
• Emergency brake doesn’t substitute for the full brake as in GTA games
• The physics of collision seems super off. 
• Not enough cars are being destroyed, they’re too sturdy. In fact, they don’t seem destroyed unless you sink them. 
• When you ram other cars, not very satisfying
• Not a lot of hilariously ramming people off motorcycles like GTA Vice City and Up
• Your car gets stuck on little invisible things and you can’t get it off, especially out in the desert. Trash bags you get stuck on. Minor dips in the outdoor terrain. it’s really bad. 
• Standard GTA problem of you walking too far away and your stolen car disappears/despawns
• When you steal a car, the people don’t seem to care or do anything about it.
• No cop cars patrolling around
• When you accidentally hit a pedestrian, you get a wanted star
• Tires don’t blow out
• Brake lights don’t light up
• No flying out of the car or motorcycle when you crash
• Only found 2-3 cars that were “GOOD” and the rest aren’t worth buying

I was talking with my daughter and she suggested they should have done a collaboration with GTA where they handle just the car driving stuff

Cop Cars are super lame!
It’s not fun to steal them at all. The siren is ANNOYING sounding. Not satisfying at all. Additionally, the NPC cars do NOTHING if you come up behind them with the siren. What’s cool about stealing cop cars in GTA is the people get out of the way and crash. Otherwise, they look really cool with the LEDs around that change color once the siren is on. 

Cop Star System
Very confusing. You get 1-star cops and go and hide in a corner as expected for GTA or Red Dead but it doesn’t wear off at all. They seem to want you to leave the area but that’s not clear on the map or in-game. Not as good as Rockstar’s star system.

Interface
Not intuitive in a few places. If they ask you to look for a shard, it’s very difficult to find and especially find out where to crack them or which “messages” contain shards that you need to hack. One menu you can only seem to get to by first hitting a menu option like I, then hitting escape. 

Had no idea how to do the body implants but figured it out.

Combat
Very good, 10/10. 

Con: game becomes WAY too easy. I was just working people from level 30-50. I never needed the FOOD/DRINK buff system and only used it about 3 times. The challenge became disappointing. I worked the main boss with just a sword and zero points in Blades. It scaled pretty well but then fell apart at the end.  

Con: Animations for blunt instruments look horrible. 

Skills

• The skill trees are all enjoyable but I found the intelligence biohacking/quick hacking to be pretty useless. I reskilled and tried them for 5 hours or so. It’s a little funny just to blind or set them on fire and then finish them off. I’d say skip the blunt skill tree too. 
• It’s super cool that if you just TRY other skills, you can earn skill points that you can then spend in other trees. 
• Awesome that you can pay to reset your skills, most games just leave you screwed and want you to replay it all again. 

Blades
I made a legendary katana and then I rush and slaughter everyone. The challenge level seems to be very low doing that option but I was L30+. It’s hilarious but very low-skill. I just jam lots of healing potions. 

Items

• Great stolen item system of junk white, green, blue, epic, and legendary items
• Crafting system that lets you deconstruct items for mats and then build other things. However, the Crafting Items become super overpowered when combined with skill tree choices to buff crated items. 

Huge Con: you spend all the time destroying items for mats, but you can’t protect the items (legendary crafted especially, epic) so that you don’t destroy them by mistake as you do this for upwards of hours. I destroyed at least 10 items I wanted to keep by mistake. You should be able to flag them as “don’t destroy” etc. 

Language
Great use of some more futuristic language but not enough that it’s hard to understand. 10/10 on the language selection/usage. Preem. Prolly. NOVA! Gonks. 

Extra Text
A ton of extra text/DVDs you pick up with 

Character
=They put the dumbest hats on you. I wish you could do the “ethereal” item that doesn’t display on character, etc. “does not display on the character”. “there’s no way to hide an item you’re wearing.” You spend all this time making your character look custom and cool and then the item system destroys it as you try to min/max the best equipment. They need “don’t display” options. Supposedly it’s in the works long term. 

Bonus Content
Go into: \steam\steamapps\common\Cyberpunk 2077\BonusContent\ and there’s extra stuff including all the songs.

Bugs

• Went to talk to a character in person AND on the phone and both were talking to me at the same time but it was the same person. Hilarious.
• Metal bots have items in there you can’t get. Then later they become a bag you can now loot.
• one time saw a car hovering
• bodies with loot get stuck under bushes and you can’t loot them

Overall top 5 or top 10 games of all time for me. So enjoyable.