Cyberpunk 2077 - The Good, the Bad and the Controversial (game review)

Preconditions

• The game was pre-ordered
• Started playing in the middle of March 2023 with patch 1.61
• Ended playing at the end of April 2023 with patch 1.62_PT_Hotfix
• No mods installed
• Time spent in the game - 199.6 hours
• Language - English (both voice and subtitles)
• The first half I played on a notebook, which barely worked even with low graphical settings, and the second half - on a machine with top (or almost top) hardware you could find in 2023 with ultra graphical settings

The Good

What I liked:

• The world. It is just gorgeous! The mix of different cultures expressed in buildings, advertisements, clothes, etc.; clean streets sided with piles of trash in the dark corners and on the beaches; the bright and live center contrasting with almost empty and colorless industrial districts; the different life in the city and the Badlands - it is all stunning and exciting!
• Level design. When doing a job, there are a lot of ways to get into the necessary location. Some of them are straightforward and don't require anything. Some of them require attentiveness to find them. And some others require a certain level of a characteristic ("Body", "Technical ability" or "Intelligence"). After installing the double or charge jump implant, a new layer of gameplay is revealed, including the ability to reach previously unreachable places for a job or for exploration purposes. And there is definitely something to explore there!
• Main story, endings and personal quests. I've never seen anything even close to this. It was interesting and well-written. I even cried after one of the endings (the most dramatic one). Personal quests are beautifully-written and intriguing
• Characters. Most of the characters, especially the ones who you face in the main jobs and their personal storylines, are memorable and interesting to interact with
• Music. The music in the game suits the world it belongs to, the places it is played in (districts, gangs locations, etc.). Even saved some songs in my playlist. And that cover to "Never Fade Away" playing in the end credits... Oh, man! Especially when combined with the voicemails and your memories of what you have been through all this time in the game. It makes me speechless!
• Voice acting. Played for a female character, and the voice fits the world, the V's "profession" and the life she lives so well. Other characters in the game sound very good, except a couple of vendors, but I can live with that. Since I speak Russian, it was especially funny to hear those Russian-speaking scavengers and some other characters while doing the gigs
• Ability to reset perks. At some point, you realize, that some perks became irrelevant to your way of playing, or you understand, that there are more useful/powerful ones. It is good to have the option to reset and redistribute them again as you wish
• Driving. Each vehicle is felt unique because of different maximum speed, handling level and skin

The Bad

What I disliked:

• Bugs. I faced different kinds of them (on both machines, with different image quality settings, with the latest patch), such as:
  • Flickering/broken/pixilated/blurry textures
  • Panam and other characters' hair color change inside and outside vehicles
  • Weapon mods being displayed in the mod slots (the dots near the weapon image) after removing them
  • Performing "Sheath weapon" (pressing the "Alt" key two times by default) selects the next weapon (happens about 3-4 times out of 10)
  • Broken animations. For example, when using "Short circuit" quickhack on people, they stand several seconds (even if they are already incapacitated), then are rendered lying on the ground
  • Clipping or mispositioned objects
  • Strange physics: objects flying several meters away from the object I started to loot, cars spinning around and damaging everything nearby, etc.
  • Immortal enemies
  • Cars appearing and disappearing right before your vehicle
  • Cars appearing and disappearing in the far, so that they can't reach you. I saw videos with this bug in earlier versions, so it is a long-living one
  • When making a save when V holds a machine gun, and then loading that save, V throws it away right after picking it up, all the time. For those, who experience it - throw the weapon away nearby and make a save; after loading the game you can safely pick it up
  • Long reaction when starting or finishing some conversations by phone in some cases. There are even more absurd ones: after asking some of the available questions, River doesn't answer to them and just stares right in your soul in an awkward silence
  • Gigs not starting. I finished one or two gigs for Padre, he gave me two other gigs, but when I approach them, he doesn't call. No working solution found yet. Everything fine with other fixers though. Because of that I missed about 8 gigs, at least one side job and two achievements
  • Crashes to desktop (CTD). Happened to me about 10 times. Glad I played Skyrim before, which taught me to save the game as often as possible
• Slowly rendering save menu. There are cases when opening the menu, and it doesn't show neither the existing saves nor the save option in 10-20 seconds. It is necessary to close it, wait several seconds and repeat, hoping it will work this time. Amount of the files is 5 (manual saves) + 1 (auto-save). I have the Ethernet cable plugged-in and a fast Internet, so even if there is a check for the saved files in the cloud, it should be rather fast...
• On the low-end machines, a large amount of save files is not fully displayed in the save/load menu. When migrating the saves from the notebook to the desktop computer, I found out there were about 800 save files - all the saves I did at that moment, but in the menu on the notebook I saw only the last ~5-10 of them. And was wondering why GOG can't save them in the cloud (because of the "have load")...
• Some animations are not smooth. There is no transition between them - they are just played one after another, which looks strange. For example:
  • When brawling, there is a small stutter when the enemy is about to punch you. If you think it is a window for counter-attack - no. I tried to block during this window, and counter-attack didn't work. It works if you do the block earlier (or later, I don't remember for sure) than this stutter
  • Superhero landing. You jump from a high, approach the ground and at ~50 cm above it the new landing animation appears, completely resetting the impulse you gained during the fall, though it looks like these 50 cm did the whole job to incapacitate the enemies around
  • When an NPCs parks a car somewhere, about 3-5 meters before the destination point the car looses all the impulse it gained (even when driving 50-80 km/h), and then gently reaches the place
• Police appearing out of nowhere and disappearing to nowhere. Breaks impassiveness very much. An old problem a lot of people pointed to since the release, and it is still there
• Inconvenient interface. I used to the bulky menus, lists, buttons etc. people usually complain on, but several issues still need improvement:
  • Some mods for implants and weapons don't have information about the implant/weapon they belong to. A usual situation: you see a scope in the vendor's store, and you wonder if it suits your sniper rifle. You buy it, and it doesn't, because it was for a pistol
  • There is no button to sell all the consumables you have. This feature would be super useful. It is totally possible to finish the game without using them even a single time
  • No image of the vehicle for buying or at least any link to the appropriate fixer's message, so you don't understand what you are buying

The Controversial

Things I upset about in their current state, which could be done better:

• Auto-leveling and rarity system. It looks very strange when you pick up a weapon with a common rarity on level 30, and it is more powerful than a legendary one you have gotten on the lower levels. That is absurd. To address the issue, weapons and clothes can be upgraded to the next level (and rarity in some cases). The problem with all that is the auto-leveling system itself. This system looks clumsy and redundant. This little trick would fix it all: just remove this auto-leveling. Range of stats for weapons and clothes would be bound to the rarity. The upgrade would be necessary only for increasing rarity of items (since you modify them, which makes them more unique = more rare)
• Though the world is big, and there are NPCs on the streets, they can't be interacted with (they have only generic phrases). If you smash into a car, you'll get only sluggish comments from the drivers. In GTA San Andreas, they would chase you for some time and try to crash your vehicle as a revenge
• Inability to remove some saves. Point-of-no-return, the last manual and auto-saves can't be removed using the in-game save/load menus. Every single game I played before allowed it, so I don't understand the reason behind this "feature"
• Development priorities. In the patch 1.62 a new ray tracing mode was introduced, while there are crucial bugs to be fixed, which means the fixing will take even longer than it could. Maybe another 3 years or more...
• Russian localization is mediocre. Checked videos with the latest patch installed. Usually under-reacting. Unnatural. Don't believe it. Such a shame, because I played The Witcher 3 with Russian localization because it was interesting, live and natural

Final thoughts

In general, I would say I liked the game, but in the first run I have seen about 95% of the content, received 93% of the achievements (could be more if not the bug I mentioned earlier) and don't really want to return - nothing for. Maybe in the far future, but I'm not sure.

And one last thing: as mentioned at the very beginning of this review, I pre-ordered the game. The first time in my life. Release of the game showed this was a mistake. I'm not going to make it ever again.