So...I originally bought Cyberpunk back in Dec of 2020 on a digital deal for my Xbox Series X. I just now got around to playing it and finishing it. I got a full 1000 gamerscore and put in about 80 hours and therefore feel VERY confident that I can offer up some solid thoughts for anyone who may be on the fence.
Short version: yeah, I loved it when all was said and done. It took me a LONG while of chugging along to get to that point though. Much to my surprise in my entire playthrough I did not encounter any gamebreaking glitches, although I did experience some weird NPC pop-in issues located near my starting apartment.
If you haven't played this game, don't expect a Witcher type experience set in a cyber city. The game is basically Watch Dogs meets Deus Ex with bits of GTA thrown in. Sometimes its greater than those games, other times it's less than.
What I liked:
1. The game allows you to play many ways. Guns ablazing, hacking and picking off players from a distance, melee etc. All are viable options. Even better is the game gives you enough room to play with multiple styles. The real fun for this game was turning each encounter into your playground as hacking powers can get hilariously overpowered.
2. Good story missions, and good sidequests. The game had some compelling characters, most with flaws, but you still sympathized with them. From working with a rockstar, nailing some fucked up dude to a cross, working with corporate shills, working with a detective on some fucked up traficking missions, the variety is there in a big way. CDPR puts a lot of thought and effort into these and they did a great job.
3. The checklist gameplay actually became fun as it was a opportunity for you to test out your skills.
4. I enjoyed how each individual skills had its own progression as it incentivized using those skills in order to get better at them.
What I didn't like.
1. Despite playing on an XSX in performance mode, there were still some performance and visual issues. Its a great looking game, but I feel like I had seen better looking games with less performance issues. Maybe that's why CDPR is moving to Unreal engine for WItcher 4. It didn't ruin the experience, but the game looked ugly at times.
2. The fast travel system pissed me the fuck off at times and its something that CDPR should have fixed. Whenever you go to a fast travel station, the map shown ONLY shows the fast travel points, while the in game map you pull up yourself has all the icons and places of interest. Let's say you go to a fast travel station and you want to travel to a weapon shop. Unless you have the locations memorized, you have to specifically mark that location on your personal map so that it shows up in the fast travel map. Its a small thing, but frustrated me and feels like an oversight that should have been fixed.
3. Around a quarter of the way through the game, you develop a "condition" that carries the story and you are trying to find a cure for that condition. That condition will rear it's ugly head in parts of the story where you get handicapped. Anyone who knows that whenever you have a character with a health condition, that condition is going to show up to impede player progress or slow the story down. This game was no exception. It was eye rolling to be in situations where I was one step away from ending the game only to fall down from that condition. Yep. To be fair, Cyberpunk built the story around this condition, but you knew that it was going to be needlessly used to hamper progress.
4. You've all heard the saying greater than the sum of it's parts. Well, as I said, Cyberpunk is basically a mix between Watch Dogs and Deus Ex. The game is exactly the sum of it's parts and never felt like a completely cohesive experience. It's hard to explain. The game never had that moment where it hit you that you were playing a game of true greatness, the way the Witcher did when I played the Bloody Baron sidequest and the Crones in Velen.
5. Not enough stealth options. One of the issues with games that don't commit to stealth is that when players who build around stealth are forced into combat scenarios.
6. Not being able to respect attribute points. This is a big deal as it keeps you locked into a certain style. To be fair, you do get quite a bit of attribute points, so you can experiment and you do get enough points that you master multiple attributes.
7. I never understood the point of street cred.
Game gets an 8/10. I will do another replay in the future. I