Finished. I guess I'd score it around a 7 or so, but keep in mind I'm judging it with itself not so much other games in general (what I mean is, let's say CP2077 is a 7, and I give Civ6 an 8, that doesn't mean Civ6 is a better game than CP2077, they're just not the same food at all).
Overall I can't say I'm too disappointed, though I did think there'd be more to it. I knew the main story was going to be short from the reviews so I did lots & lots of side gigs, but even so it was WAY shorter than I expected.
I will give them this though, compared to The Witcher 3 they vastly improved on gameplay combat & progression, which were that game's biggest weaknesses. The actual fighting is a LOT of fun, the guns feel great to shoot and I ended up enjoying smart weapons a lot more than I thought I would, but mostly I just played a gorilla arms build and pummelled everyone to death, that feels the most cyberpunk to me.
Unfortunately I'd say in terms of the actual story telling it was worse, by quite a bit. They set up really nice cinematic moments but almost every section of the game felt like it was incomplete, like you were reading excerpts. Then we couple that with their penchant for pseudo-philosophizing like a teen kid who just stumbled unto literature written by people who've also stumbled unto philosophy but never engaged it deeply at all and it I just can't help but roll my eyes and skip through it. Not sure this would bother most people, but it did me. And don't get me started on the ending(s) - bleah.
Then should we go for the other elements? The rudimentary AI? The low interactivity of the world? The sections (such as races & driving in general) which looked to be even below average and almost busted? My issue is not even so much any single element like that but rather that pretty much all of them are like that when you examine them even a bit, and there's nothing to find that's redeeming.
I mean, there's a lot to pick through, and honestly not sure I even care anymore. It's a game that's tearing at the seams & there's plenty of flaws in every single section. I think though my main question is - why make it open world? It's clear that they want to do these "cinematic" games, but then why bother making the open world? Again, I enjoyed the combat and I certainly like going through night city, but I also feel like that doesn't last long enough for a player such that you'd pour all this work into it. If they do a Cyberpunk 2077 mark II then okay, I understand, that makes sense, but as it stands & as I've been reflecting on the game while playing it I just don't get it. The open world part - by itself - is below average, and then the main story missions & how they all tie-in are I'd say good, but not great nor all the interesting. So what's left? And at least if they focused all their energy on the cinematic part and make it a linear or at least semi-linear experience then they could deliver better on that.
One thing I do dream of though is VR support. Just looking around Night City at all the buildings going past and oh man, you just can't do justice to the world they've built in terms of feeling the depth of the game. Maybe with a microLED ultrawide wall or something, but they've done it immensely and even a 55" flat screen just is too small to convey the feeling properly.
Like I said, if they do a sequel then it could be truly great provided they work on the gameplay aspects & systems in order to improve the actual open world part of it, but frankly the writing & story structure needed much more work too, everything just felt too disjointed. Imo if they had forgotten the premise around Silverhand and just went more for building V's reputation (with Jackie & all) and just made it a Night City story, it would've turned into a 100 times better experience. I'll stop tho, I could keep adding thoughts to it for days, but it's not worth it, there's just too much wrong here.
At least we got a cool OST out of it.
