Not an RPG - But still Good

Remember also that a lot of work has clearly gone into redeeming this game, and its DLC is excellent. Also, this review is a legacy review from when the game was first released.

Intro

So here goes, a review of one of the most hyped games of recent times. A game that is at one step celebrated, while being derided in equal measure depending on where you look. People will mostly know the history of this game, but let's do a recap just in case you've lived in a gaming cave for the last few months/years.

Originally announced in 2012, finally released at the end of 2020 after a team of around 500 people beavered away on it. Cyberpunk 2077 has been developed by the same team that developed the almost universally acclaimed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (a game I have restarted so many times but never got beyond the prologue on).

The launch of the game could be said to have been challenging, you could go more severe than that if you want. It is fair to say that (currently) unless you have a high-end PC, use Stadia (apparently some people do), or were lucky enough to acquire an Xbox Series X or Playstation 5, then you are going to have a tough time with this game. The launch was so bad that Sony even removed the game from the e-store, something which is unprecedented for such a high profile release. Personally, none of the issues that are apparent on older consoles, or even the issues I myself have found surprise me in any way. You only have to look at what has been delivered to see how the game has such massive scale and ambition to see that it would be impossible for the hype and expectation to be delivered on.

Does that mean that Cyberpunk 2077 is a failure, something to be remembered as a cautionary tale for older game developers to tell their children? Absolutely not (in my opinion). We do however have to be realistic about the game, now that we can look past the hype and actually play what has been delivered to us.

Normally I wouldn't bother making note of the specs of the machine I am playing the game on, but for Cyberpunk 2077 I think it is important. Especially if you have doubts over whether to purchase or not. So here goes (this was about 3 years ago now, have since upgraded):

Platform: PC

Processor: i7 9700k

Memory: 16GB (3000mhz DDR4)

GPU: nvidia 2080ti

Game installed on: Intel 660P NVME

Screen Resolution: 2560x1440 (1440p) - RTX on, DLSS on

Performance

Usually I wouldn't even comment on this, since my PC is reasonably powerful. But with this game, performance is important depending on how you want to play the game (at least on PC where you have a lot of graphics options available).

The chief option to consider is raytracing, the proper reflection of light and generation of shadows. Night City is full of neon, full of light and shadow and this should be generated properly. Normal rasterization techniques can only fake it so much. Currently it's only available on nvidia 2000 and 3000 series cards (not that anyone can buy 3000 series cards at the moment). The thing is that this option has a severe performance impact if you choose to use it.

When I first started playing the game, on release, I was getting about 45fps. After a patch or two, I am now getting 60fps. So broadly speaking, performance is better, right? Well, that really depends on the options you have available. The thing with this game is that, graphically, it is BEAUTIFUL. But that is on the right hardware. Night City is such an astonishingly realised environment that it needs some powerful hardware to draw it at an acceptable clip. But I said that this was with raytracing on, and said it had a performance impact, right? That is true, and it highlights that for this game, if you want raytracing on, you have to have DLSS enabled. There's no other option. Without DLSS on, I get around 28fps on the same settings. But what of non-raytracing cards?

> Simply put, CP2077 is a very demanding game.

New AMD series cards can run the game quite happily on ultra, but not with everything turned on if you expect to get 60fps and you're playing at 4K. This game is a performance monster where the graphics are concerned. If you've got an older graphics card, you will definitely want to play with the settings and think about what resolution to run the game at regardless of the resolution of your screen.

Graphics (and bugs) aside, the rest of the performance is pretty good. Despite all the graphics finery on display, load times to get into the game itself are really solid (might be down to my NVME). Texture pop-in is un-noticeable (at least to me) and there are no loading breaks when driving around the city itself. You just have to be aware that if you have slightly older PC hardware, or a PS4/Xbox One X, you may want to consider holding of buying until there have been a few more patches released.

Visuals

I've sort of talked about the visuals already, but it needs to be restated. Of the many open world games I have played, while they all have their merits and their beautiful visuals, in my opinion nothing comes close to the level of artistry and design shown in Cyberpunk 2077. Night City is an amazing place to just explore. It's a living, breathing city. It looks like the images I have in my head when I read sci-fi books (weirdly I am thinking of the Takeshi Kovacs series by Richard Morgan here). It has nooks and cranny's you will find interesting things in. The city has verticality, it's not just a big wide open space so that the developer can say the map is X amount of square miles for bragging rights. Now, it's definitely true that not every door can be opened, and there are lots of repeating NPCs wandering around, but I still maintain that I have not seen anything like this in a game before. For Night City alone, the visuals are without compare to me. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a beautiful game, the sun cresting over a hill in Assassin's Creed Valhalla is always a sight to behold, but the level of design and the execution shown in CP2077 (for me) puts it head and shoulders above other games.

Don't get me wrong, it's not all beautiful. The inventory screens are functional at best, the crafting screens are annoying and whoever designed the UI elements for sending messages and reading shards needs to think about using space more effectively. But, hopefully, you're not playing the game for the UI screens... There are a few too many dildos onscreen in certain areas for my tastes, but I'm sure that wouldn't bother others.

Sound Design

Open world games usually have lots going on, so there is a lot to listen to. So, for me, in games like this I focus on the way the ambient sounds (radio tracks and NPC noise) help the game, and of course I think about the voice acting of the main voiced parts. So, radio, music and incidental sounds... The radio tracks are cool, if you like that sort of thing. I couldn't say there are any standouts (at least for me), when compared to something like the GTA or Saints Row radio tracks. They do what they need to do, but you can largely ignore them. NPCs are another kettle of fish altogether. Yes, there are a lot of repeated phrases, but there are some gems in there too. They certainly help with the atmosphere generated and I like hearing what they have to say. The overall soundtrack is also good too, the track(s) that jump in when you're in combat are really good. The voice acting is a mixed bag though. I am playing as a female V with the female voice chosen (you can mix and match in the character creation). The main V (female) voice is good, but not great. Some of the lines are missing what I think of as the right emphasis. It's not Kassandra from Assassin's Creed Odyssey or FemShep good, but better than most. The rest of the cast are all pretty good, and mostly don't sound like they're phoning in the lines which is good. Your pal Jackie is definitely a standout though, really good job by that actor. The rest of the sound design does what it needs to do. Guns sound suitably gunny, swords swoosh and cars make skidding noises at the right point. I could also talk about Keanu Reeves performance as Johnny Silverhands, but I do not really want to go anywhere near that. He's good, not great, and in the game more than you would have thought...

Gameplay

This is where things get a bit more interesting, because for me CP2077 is a bit of a mixed bag in the gameplay department. As said before, I love exploring the city and seeing what mischief I can get in to, but the game wants me to do missions and to craft and to RPG my character. It is in this that it is sometimes less than successful.

The RPG elements are basically boiled down to spending points to upgrade your V with a few percentage points of ability, of course you could say that about every RPG out there. Thing is, I am not sure I see much of a change over time to make it something I care about. Crafting is something to do for a quick stat point upgrade, but looks like something you could ignore completely if you want to. Playing missions is good fun, as they vary enough to make them interesting. Perhaps not in their core theme, collect this, kill that, upload virus something else, but they are well designed and voiced and keep you interested. What I absolutely LOATHE is the hacking/stealth mechanic(s). The hacking mini-game when you find a thing to hack to get some money or items is fine, it does what it needs to do and is enough of a challenge to be interesting. But the hacking to be stealthy in an actual mission is really badly implemented for me. So bad that I just don't bother. Guns (or now swords since they are so much fun) is the way to go. This is NOT a stealth game for me. It just doesn't work. Besides, it amuses me when I get told off by my fixer for laying waste to the mission area when I wasn't supposed to... Honestly though, stealth (for me) in this game just doesn't work at all, and I would recommend others to avoid that aspect of this game. Again, your experience may vary, if it does then great.

The story is interesting enough for me to want to see it all, and the side missions are well worth doing. I especially liked the talking vending machine I found last night. A very small, silly side mission that amused me greatly. If you have played previous CDPR games, you know they write a good mission, and they have done so again.

The main problem is, that for me at least, this feels like an FPS more than an RPG, which is a shame.

There's a lot to do in this game. Certainly a lot of highlighted points on the map. These could be main missions, side missions (gigs), random encounters and many others I am sure I have not got to. So far I have put in about 30 hours to this game, and I doubt I will get much change out of 150 hours before I have done everything I want to do. I read elsewhere that the main story is short though. So that just tells me I want to do the side stuff first, and as said before, there is enough interesting content here to keep me playing this game for a long time yet.

Fun

Hugely subjective though this (and the whole review) is, I am having fun with CP2077. Bar one really bugged quest and a few audio issues, I am enjoying myself immensely. I think this is because the city is just such an interesting place to explore, and that is good enough for me. Yes, the RPG mechanics seem very superifical. Yes, the crafting is a largely redundant thing. Yes, at its core it is an FPS game with TERRIBLE stealth, so might get a bit samey later. But for now, I love playing this game and will continue to have fun with it for a long time yet. The only thing that might not make it fun later is when it becomes too easy. I am not sure, but I think that quests etc have a set difficulty, and as your stats get better, that difficulty doesn't scale. So it might become a walk in the park the more I do the side stuff. Of course I could play it on a higher difficulty, but I don't want to so I won't. Me and my flame-inducing submachine gun are having more than enough fun right now thank you very much, and my samurai sword is now learning how to play too.

tldr

CP2077 is beautiful, over-hyped, graphics card munching open world fun. It displays a level of graphical design that is amazing to behold, that is bolted to a game which is very good but not the life-changing event we may have been led to believe it would be. It will make you laugh a bit, it will show you an interesting story or three if you let it. If you have a decent PC, or one of the new consoles, buy now and you will have fun. If you have older hardware, wait a bit for a few more patches, then you will have fun too.