By now I’ve finished two full playthroughs and I will keep playing, because this game is absolutely incredible!
Firstly, I’ve got extremely attached to my character. Usually, I’m all about stats when I pick gear in an RPG. In Cyberpunk 2077, a first-person game, I was traveling around the city to find shoes that would look good with V’s new dress and fit her personality. I prefer to make photos of vistas both in games and in real life, but in Cyberpunk 2077 I’ve spent half an hour to make perfect selfie, because I felt that V would do that. Starting a new playthrough with a new character was tough, but in the end, it didn’t feel like I’m replacing one V with another. Their journeys were vastly different, almost like there were two Vs and both of them lived in the same city, just in different districts (I know it doesn’t make sense plot wise, but it feels like this).
Secondly, this world is amazing. Dense places, sparce places, boring places, big crowds, lonely people, emptiness, uplifting spots, depressing spots, planes, verticality – there’s so much diversity and so many details. Nothing ever feels like a video game level planted in open-world environment. Even with all visual glitches and even with the fact that my PC can’t hit FPS target on the settings I’m using I was still incredibly immersed and was launching the game just to walk around if I had a bit of spare time. And ray tracing makes everything look so real!
Story is an interesting thing (I’ll avoid spoilers). There are strong moments and there are several of them, but I never felt a huge emotional impact (for reference, very few games had achieved that). However, on my second playthrough I’ve ignored minor side quests, and the ending felt stronger. Overall, story feels less like a complete ark and more like a moment in life. A defining moment, but not the only thing this character will be remembered for. Such stories usually take time to grow on me, so it’s hard to tell now whether I’ll be keep thinking about it in a year or I’ll completely forget it.
Gameplay has it flaws, but it wasn’t a problem for me. When I’ve realized that melee combat is bad, I’ve just RPed that my character isn’t good at it. When AI make dumb things, I just pretend I’ve hacked this enemy. Even when I had to manually fix some glitches, like frozen subtitles, muted sound of footsteps, or performance slowdown, it doesn’t break my immersion and doesn’t reduce my engagement. I don’t know why, probably because other aspects are so strong.
Do I think that Cyberpunk 2077 could be better? Yes. Do I think that Cyberpunk 2077 it needs to be better? It would be nice. Do I think that Cyberpunk 2077 is incredible as it is? Absolutely! I’ve never played anything like this, and I’ll be comparing all future games to this one in so many ways. I will not say this definitively before I’ll play some other 2020 games, but currently it’s my GotY.
P.S. This post reflects just my own opinion based only on my own experience. I’m writing this not to tell everyone how they should think or feel, but to add my perspective in case someone is browsing this thread trying to decide whether to play this game or not.
