#It's bizarre. I will never understand how it garnered such popularity and clout whilst having actually nothing to show for it.

[jaythelay]

"legally" obtained Cyberpunk and it's been a ride.

It's a very confused game. Much of it feels undesigned, like they had an idea, implemented it, and barely adjusted it from there. That's not a claim, that's what it feels like, to be clear.

To me, it's weird having an open world at all for something that thus far feels like hallway after hallway designs. Sometimes it gets so absurd, like climbing very boring rubble with little to look at to continue the story, and it's got platforming but I can only ask what would be lost if they did anything else? One time so far an elevator failed, so I had to walk left, press F, then it came down and I could continue normally. What. Was the point.

The inventory system is as cool as it feels undesigned. All the UI is terrible and none of the stats carry meaning. It's just how they shoot differently, and that, is really cool. I found a sniper rifle that shoots 9 shots in a circle, that's cool as hell. Gives me borderlands vibes, but I imagine every gun like it does the same, so it starts to feel more like they had far too many designs and didn't want to leave any off the table. I'm usually fine with this but the sheer abundance of the exact same weapon duplicating in your inventory is rather undesigned feeling. Idunno what to dissasemble nor where to put shit up. Though the fact some are shooting differently from one another is rather refreshing in the FPS scene.

I skipped the intro. Fully expected the intro to take far, far, far too long before anything of real interest happens. As far as the story goes it's confused. I'm saving the US president? In the first hour essentially? Eh, honestly the president has been pretty fuckin' badass so I'm able to focus on her characterization more than her job being The Most Importantest Thing Everz (we can't write story but can characters, aka) I'm a Street Punk who suddenly is protecting America's Democracy ans president.... yay cyberpuuunk....

Performance is all over the place and visually the game is incompetent without raytracing. It looks fine enough with RT, but without, oh wow, nobody spent much time on that. HDR settings are fake and meaninglessly unusable like most games, no setting other than RT seems to improve performance either. Even upscalers aren't doin' nothin'. Primarily the lighting and brightness of the game is downright awful. Simple Darks becomes Black and Brights become White. You'll be needing Reshade for this one folks, I can't stress enough how much work it took to get the game to be Visible??

In terms of gameplay, man what's going on with the scroll wheel for weapons. The hell are these god awful claws? Why do they keep showing up when I'm scrolling through guns? I'm in the middle of a firefight trying to switch to a sniper and they pull out fuckin claws? Can't even unequip them and melee in the game has thus far proven rather poor, fruitless, unfun, and not worthwhile. A real joke of a weapon forced into your weapon scrolling. Can't quick change either, gotta wait on the pull out animation. Gunplay is...bulletspongey for the sake of it. They had big guys with big guns at 2 points so far and I've never been able to use their gun on a single enemy thus far. It's cool they don't just ragdoll upon death, and play an animation as long as they're being shot, though, maybe the giant mech could've ragdolled when only it's toe was on the upper floor.

Exploration is borked head to toe. There's one section where you're on the story path, and ya look around every possible direction but forward, just to eventually find a small square of the area in between doesn't have double jumping for some reason. So you double jump in areas you can to explore and find....absolutely nothing there was 0 reasons to have a random square non-double jumpable and exploration didn't matter other than ammo...of which the game gave me 999 for every single one basically at the end of every encounter? You're never gonna go below 700 bullets. Might as well not even bother with ammo pick ups? It's really, really "undesigned" stuff.

In order to get what feels like a rather essential and basic skill, I have to unlock an entire section for? with like 13 points or some shit I have NO CLUE where to obtain? Leveling up in general is exceptionally poor. Nothin' is organized or makes an ounce of sense. There's 40 different things to level up and 0 direction for what any of it is. Just kinda...saving points til I can actually buy something...rather simple? Meh.

Hacking is an absolute joke. I sincerely hope whoever designed that crap never gets another job in gaming. It's indescribably bad. There is no way to elaborate. You see it, and genuinely want to punch the creator of it. Bad. Exceptionally so and doesn't take much time to realize it.

Oh and they have QTE that uses the Dialogue Box for input. Absolutely. Hilarious. I don't even know if I should call it bad, if it works it works, but man, it's really lame, rather lazy feeling. Imagine if Fallout had QTE using their dialogue boxes, it feels rather poor.

But bizarrely, despite all this, I can't say it's been a bad time. I haven't gone "Bro what even is the point in continuing" or "Wow ya'll really didn't think to playtest this part huh." nah it's been fine. A decent middle of the road 6/10 experience that you easily can get elsewhere and better. But it's not dreadful. It's interesting in some areas, the MC's writing is unbearable to enjoyable, the other characters....exist. The designs of everyone is dogshit, Idunno who said Cyberpunk needed the ugliest looks but boy they went with it.

I don't reccomend it however. It really has been middle of the road generic slop. Far too much of a budget for the gameplay it actually is, and thus far too costly given the price. Get it on sale for 20$ bargain bin prices and you'll have a fair trade. Surprisingly playable, but unsurprisingly incompetent, but even more surprisingly, not a bad time. Just not a very good one. You'll feel a higher quality in indie titles, as usual.

It's confused as hell and doesn't got a clue what it is or wants to be, but the ideas inside, while not well executed, do keep the game feeling fresh at times. It does feel a cut above the average FPS in moments, but it overall does nothing better or new than any previous game similar. Just shootin' guys, poor stealth mechanics, and endless talking, with dogshit exploration, in poor level design sections. But it's fun enough to not focus on all of that, the pace of the story keeps bad ideas from lasting too long (sans the giant mech fight nobody playtested) but in turn you're gonna pass out waiting on story to give up it's stolen turn of fun so you can get back to having fun. It really does start to become "okay when does gameplay happen?" after a while. Dialogue choices thus far are frivilous.

It's just...confusing this game had so much time and budget...there's...nothing here. Nothing to indicate it took a decade and a half to come out. Not one aspect feels like the budget helped. Just the graphics which have awful visuals without RT. How does a game made a decade before RT existed, look horrific without it?

Oh and the bugs and jank. It's not as bad as release day but this shit's Jank-yyy. Like people just...spawn inside you. Or walk into walls? One time an enemy's feet was stuck in the ground... It's not embarrassingly bad like most modern titles, but it is noticeably poor at times.

I don't have much else to say. I wouldn't even say much about this if it didn't have a marketing team ensuring people made claims of the game based on emotion they created in their head based off concepts in the game, but not anything actually in-game. It really is a generic slop of an experience, but given today's standards, I guess that's high quality now. Meh. It's not horrific, just...forgettable. Nothing in here makes me go "Oh man I wish my friends got to experience this!" it's just mindless for the most part. I sincerely don't see the hype for the game, it really is amateur hour between the higher budgeted sections for story primarily if not solely.

Why bother with an open world if you're just gonna make a streamlined linear experience? There's no reason to go killing at random and less reason to explore. Rather empty but cluttered with the exact same burrito vending machine over and over. NPCs got nothin to say. It really is just a confused game top to bottom. But the difference between other confused titles and this one, is they actually seemed confident enough to make poor ideas into unbothersome ideas. From mediocre to decent.

I just Do Not Think anyone had a clue towards game design on this product. It's painful how confused it is. And it's even harder to explain such a point in a game riddled with half-ideas polished into half a doorknob. If I were best to describe it, it feels like 4 teams worked on the game at the same time, and then they had to put it together at some point far too late to fix any inconsistencies or poor designs. Like they had 4 versions of the game and grabbed what worked best from each and put it in with reckless abandon.

At no point does it feel like a path was fully intended. It just feels like they're using assets they only just saw and only were just provided. Exploration is the largest part of this confusion factor, as it's just dreadful.

Anyways, nah this ain't a rant. It's more of a "Wow despite all of yourself, you're still fun" it feels like if a bargain bin game got far too much of a budget and too long to develop, but the devs were passionate enough to make it work regardless. It's impressive in that, despite all it's flaws, you can still have a pretty above average time in it, just...don't expect anything revolutionary or approaching as much. It's all ideas you've seen before and done better half-slapped into here with little regard.

But it is fun. It is decent. Just not...the size of it, good, the size and passion of the community, good. It's Greg levels. Ya don't hate Greg, but ya don't really want to be around them, though when you are you never have a bad time. That, is Cyberpunk 2077. Greg.