Cyberpunk 2077
Note: This review was made on the 2.1 version of CP2077 and Phantom Liberty.
The developers have managed to put together one hell of a city, running on one hell of a graphics engine. It looks good on most system configurations, but given the top of the line it really outdoes itself. It's a feast for the eyes and at least one main reason to go through it all.
The city is also one very nice playground for your amateur climber and parkour fan. Especially with the right leg cyberware and the ability to dash and air-dash. That alone has made exploring the city a lot of fun, trying to get to the weirdest places.
Immersion is also at its peak while playing, and the setting just oozes style. It also has one of the coolest mechanics for narrative exploration, via the braindance mechanic. It's somewhat similar to what Rocksteady's Batman game did, for the investigations, but a lot cooler. I really hope they choose to and manage to expand this into something even more full-fledged in the sequel.
In terms of gameplay, it's a considerable improvement over Witcher 3, especially in terms of possible ways of getting through combat encounters. And I was surprised and chose to get through most of it in a full stealth build, and only later, after maxing that out, chose to also expand into a netrunner build. A veritable wizard of the cyberpunk setting. I will want to try a pure melee build sometime in the future, but I do worry about the lack of quickhacks, as versatile and impactful as they are.
The overall story is good, with some nice plot points along the way, both in the main and in the Phantom Liberty expansion, but especially the endings of each of them. They just ooze high production value. Also in the narrative department, while it has plenty of side content, via gigs and jobs, and a few of them do have sizable narrative arcs, spanning multiple missions, I have to say that most of them are fairly forgettable or serviceable. Somehow in this department it feels like they fell short of Witcher 3's optional content, that you could easily mistake for main content. I do hope I don't just have rose-tinted glasses, but I suspect I do not.
Another issue with the side content, and this is due to the setting in general (and this is definitely more of a personal issue) is that the whole setting feels more like GTA, with plenty of satire, than Blade Runner. And I would've loved it if it were more of the latter than the former. There's also a dissonance between the two visions, both of which are present in CP2077 but they clash with each other; where one tries to take it self seriously and give a philosophical outlook on this type of dystopian future of mankind, while the other is just crass and unsubtle and disarms that critique from being taken seriously by the person experiencing it.
Another negative is the itemization, balancing and economy overall. In terms of itemization and economy it's still pretty poor and unremarkable. Money still has no value since you can easily exploit it. Having done a 100% run, and having completed all the side content before tackling the main stuff, for a good 1/3rd of the game I had maxed out everything on my character in terms of leveling and haven't changed my gear for that time at all. With the latest patch they also made everything scale to the player's level, so there is a constant difficulty curve generally speaking, which makes all enemies feel pretty much the same. Except for the 0.1% of encounters which can have incredible and sometimes impossible difficulty spikes. I could not, even after a lot of attempts, overcome the Adam Smasher fight on the hardest, Very Hard, difficulty. All of this indicates that there's not a lot of balancing by hand done in the game, and CDPR just threw up its hands and resorted to an auto-scaling difficulty, which results in mostly unremarkable combat encounters. Luckily the skill and cyberware systems have been overhauled in the 2.0 patch, giving considerably more options. Too bad they couldn't also balancing the whole experience by hand, to ensure a certain player difficulty curve.
But even with all of these significant negatives, overall the game is an absolute joy to experience. The quality of the main story and content, and the effort that was put into realizing Night City as probably the best dystopian cities in gaming; all of these manage to overcome the negatives, especially if you do not dilute the whole experience by delving too much into the side content. I unfortunately went for a completionist run, and did experience a lot of the negatives, but I hope they manage to improve on these in the sequel
To wrap things up, I'd like to mention the soundtrack which is also pretty fantastic, with plenty of amazing moody pieces, combat themes and everything inbetween. I did not care very much for the radio stations, but that's just me. I generally prefer to ride my bike across the cityscape with the radio off, just taking in the mood of the city. And it is a grand city indeed. Probably one of the best city settings in any game. And I do wonder how they'll try to improve on it in the sequel.
All in all, I'd have to give it an 9/10. And a definite recommendation.
Phantom Liberty:
The expansion builds on top of the already great setting of Night City, and just when you thought they couldn't make the city even more impressive, they went and did that. Dogtown is an absolute masterpiece in terms of design, layout and visuals. It manages to create its own little ecosystem that's been a great joy to explore on foot.
The story fits very well into the base game plot, and brings in some solid new characters. Their narrative branches are compelling and I was surprised how differently they wrap up, after making certain plot ending choices, both in terms of mood and story but also in terms of completely different final combat encounters. Sometimes the game feels a bit too bombastic and trying to outdo itself, if you expected a more subtle spy-thriller approach to the whole thing, but it does manage to balance out those high moments with more personal touches that do give the player pause. The expansion also optionally, depending on the chosen ending, introduces a potential new ending option, which I loved very much. It's a significantly different ending with a different future in store for the protagonist.
In terms of gameplay, it's the same thing as the base game. In my case it was doubly so since I had maxed out everything long before I reached the expansion (also having put off the expansion content until I was at the point of no return for the main story branches). But even so, and even with the not ideal difficulty scaling, I was able to really enjoy the setpieces they put together.
A solid expansion that's probably mandatory for the full experience. A 9/10.
. Im not really interested in the superheroes thing but as a whole experience it was ok, voice acting was top notch, combat and the whole card system was pretty entertaining but at the same time too many explosions and fireworks everywhere, too cinematic, kinda "you press a button, something awesome happens". Around 70h to finish it, did many side missions but from what i read those were infinite so i stopped at some point.
