Recent reviews by Xzibit

(12.12.2020, 02:00 AM GMT+1) Just finished the game, What a ride.

So first things first. This is not the Witcher 3. Actually i would say that i had more fun with the Witcher 3 than Cyberpunk 2077 but thats not really a comparison to make before cyberpunks DLCs and patches release.

Alright so how good is the game?

The story is the absolute best thing in this game second to none. The relationship between Johnny and V is really dynamic and goes through multiple stages in the game. Depending on your choices it can be hostile or you could end up as friends on the way to the end of the game. There are a lot of interesting turning points in its main story, it does not feel like you are ever really in control of the situation, which actually is a good thing in the context of the games setting, It will keep you on the edge of your seat permanently. Dialogues throughout every single quest i have done as of now are solid to great. Characters are interesting and unique across the board and there a many "longer" storylines for side-characters in this game. From start to finish of those, you will see development in their personalitys, that more often than not lead to a little bit of a "surprising" conclusions to the questlines. This game does have a BUNCH of endings that all fit this absolute beast of an adventure. Absolute 10/10 here really enjoyed every second of the main questline and the character questlines.

The Gameplay could be better, but it is actually exactly what I (at least) was expecting. If you have one sniper, one assault rifle and a shotgun equipped you can obviously beat this game easily, but absolutely miss the point on what this game wants to achieve. Theres really more variety in the gameplay of this game than in anything I have ever seen. There are 12 skilltrees and every single one really makes a difference. Surely the most effective way is going to be to put your skillpoints in rifles and just gun everyone down, but if you waited 7 years for a game, you might aswell have some fun. :) For me its like an 8/10. Nothing surprising but really good variety in builds and playstyles and if you play it smart, some objectives can even be solved by talking only.

The world is a little disappointing to me tbh. Sure, some sidequests are fun, it really looks good and all, but most of Night City does not feel like the metropolis one would expect. Im going to need an example for this. Cyberpunk, sadly, does not have that. There are different districts to Night City and they all are unique, but you are just not experiencing it. Example given would be Pacifica, a district where the law of Night City doesnt apply. It is controlled by the animals, a gang made up of really buff african-americans with beaches and beautiful spots. Now how much does the game give you the incentive to explore there? Zero. The game has all of this great design and cool ideas, differences in nearly every district that make them really special, but makes absolutely no effort to introduce the player to all there is to see. If you want to really experience the districts theres no other way but to get on your bike and drive around, which is sad and boring, because it leaves so much room for improvement. Just give me 2 NPCs having a fight at the side of the road or some traffic accident on one of the countless empty streets that leads into a nice little sidequest please? It would make the player actually remember some spots on the map where something happened and also would make driving around so much more fun. For me it sadly is 5/10. Mostly you will use the fast travel rather than exploring the world.

The graphics are good to great. Played on ultra settings in 1440p on a 1080 TI (INSTALL YOUR NVIDIA DRIVERS PEOPLE). Sadly that meant no RTX or DSLL for me, but thats fine. Performance is a little lackluster when fighting in a dark space, especially the various grenades that have smoke and/or fire effects will kill the framerate so that it would sometimes drop below 60 for me. 8/10 for me, theres more impressive games but if its dusk ingame and you coincidentally are at a beach you would still watch the sunset for a minute or two.

The Sounddesign is interesting to me. The soundtrack is full of absolute bangers, many of which have made it to my spotify playlist. In cars theres a good amount of radio channels to fit nearly every taste. Most guns sadly sound the same, which also is the case for cars and bikes but that might be a little nitpicky. Voice acting is good, but there are lot of bugs at the moment. 8/10 if fixed.

Questdesign and Quest Variety is something that i would have liked to write about in the paragraph where I am going on about the world, but i felt like it deserved its own little spot in the review. It is a double edged sword in this game to be honest. While all of the Mainquests and the questlines for certain characters are unique and often give you some new form of gameplay (as example diving, rolling to battle in a tank, controlling a nanobot) most of the other sidequests you will do are "go there, shoot that guy" type of deals. Sometimes you have to steal something, sometimes drive around, sometimes "talk to this guy", or the most simple of all would be just a mob of bad guys you see on the minimap when you are driving to your next interesting objective which make you think "well i could use some crafting materials, better just flatline those guys". There is a lot of potential here for DLCs in the future, but as is 6/10 on that front. . If you ever played a single ubisoft game you know what i mean. Just imagine a Night City full of outposts. Tiresome, boring, unrewarding. Still, it is something to do should you ever want some mindless gameplay while your girlfriend talks about her day.

The replayability of this game is completely dependent on what you enjoy and play the game for aswell as your playstyle throughout your first run, which is why I am only going tbe writing about the way I see it and not give a "rating/10"
To me it is not replayable. I know the story, I know the conclusion and i will not play 40 hours of the same quests with the same dialogue again to romance someone else and get a 10 minute ending sequence i have not seen yet. I will go to Youtube for that.

The State of the game is an absolute mess (12.12.2020, 02:00 AM GMT+1). I wish CDPR would have taken a month or two extra to fix it. It is so sad that the Immersion gets broken so damn often because the NPCs model goes pitchblack, clips in a wall or teleports around. I cant count how many bugs I discovered in my playthrough that were ridicilous, frustrating or just straight up gamebreaking. Again, I am sure CDPR will fix it soon but it would not be a stupid idea to wait a week or two before diving in as it would probably make the game more enjoyable.

Conclusion
So there it is, the glorious Cyberpunk 2077. First of all, considering the amount of hype the game had was massive, and it is normal that some superfans go berzerk on reddit. Cyberpunk is not the arrival of a new and cybernetically improved Jesus Christ, but it is a really good and entertaining, in some aspects even fantastic video game. I am really surprised about how many different aspects this game is able to deliver at a really high level of quality. I have a lot of respect for that and like Cyberpunk a lot. For me this game is an 8/10 at least and, should DLCs deliver the same high quality content, could very well be my next time sink for my lonely lockdown nights.

So: Is the game good? Yes. Should i buy it? Yes.

Got this game off humble choice and although most of the picks there are trash i was surprised by this one.

I feel like the market for these strategic-roguelike-indie games is kind of oversaturated at the moment. For every successful game in this genre (e.g. Slay the Spire, FTL, Binding of Isaac) there are like 10 clones.

This game is a lot like ftl, really similar combat mechanics and upgrade system, also the starmap, the way you manage your crew and many more similarities.

However i do think that this game adds to that experience in a meaningful way by improving what FTL was not great at which was the low number of world events (sometimes you would see the same event 3 times in a run), the different ships that actually offer different playstyles because of a "class"-system for the ships, a little bit of story with multiple dialogue options, pilot skills (that are useful in the scavenging missions on planets), more interesting "bossfights"and so on.

Absolute steal for the price of a humble choice subscription would like to see more from the devs.

Very nice little adventure for around 5-10 hours.

Is it morally thought-provoking? Maybe. I personally thought the last episode did not leave much room to debate about, however in my opnion it was a really good written, nicely presented (short) story to dive in.

Was positively surprised since i got it for like 2 dollars off humblebundle.

Sadly i dont see how this game would be replayable although it has multiple endings, because of the combination of a heavily scripted story and mechanically unchallenging gameplay.

Once you played it once you know who the bad guys and who the good guys are, so why would you click and drag through the menus for 4 hours again?

Still an absolute steal for a few dollars, would recommend to have played this once!