The story in the main game and the side quests are good by any literary standard. I would recommend this game just for that, even if it didn't have any visual qualities, or any gameplay at all.
I have one hundred-percented all locations, and I have all of the completionist achievements that matter. The open world of Cyberpunk is phenomenal. It feels like a real city. I get lost in it (both literally and immersively) and I have spent tens of hours after every objective was done just running through areas I thought I had never been to and uncovering unmarked quests or stories hidden throughout the world.
There are times while playing this game that I genuinely felt more a denizen of Night City than of the real world. Absolute immersion, real beauty. This is among the best games ever made and it will never receive that respect because of the cultural reception at launch which is an absolute pity.

As the game has ironed out visual optimization, my performance has actually worsened since launch. I'm playing on an R5 2600X with a GTX 1060 3GB, 32 GBs of RAM on Medium settings 1080p. I get something between 25-45 frames, but at launch I almost always had above 30. Normally, I don't play games below 60 fps on PC but for Cyberpunk I make an exception. The game looks phenomenal, and I use a blade/stealth build, which doesn't require high fps to execute well. Shooting guns is miserable when I have to.

Cyberpunk is the first game I've ever seen nail the facial animations ( I have since played Outriders and Fallen Order which do them well, but still not as good). In many games, even the most detailed models with high quality mocap can have faces that look totally flat (for example: even with all its charm, Hellblade's animations are flaky 30% of the time). I mention this because it drives a lot of what the game does well. The game was about 50% dialogue for the first 10 hours, and the story is what seems to have gotten the most development attention after the open world. I feel like I've been able to connect to these characters a lot more because I can actually empathize with what they feel. They fidget in their seats, cross their legs, adjust their stance. Along with some solid voice acting, it all leads to highly immersive conversations.

The world of Cyberpunk, beyond just being gorgeous, is also dense and filled with detail. Sure, almost all buildings you can't walk into, but there are a ton you can and all of them are overly detailed. The NPCs aren't great but their presence along with advertisements and culture helps make the city feel alive, rather than a bunch of plasticky polygons, even if some of the taller buildings and highways start to look like that. Advertisements and environmental stories cover most alleys.

Performance issues have kinda left me unable to enjoy gun combat so far, but I play with the blades and that is still a ton of fun. The blunt melee looks really bad but slicing somebody up with a katana or those arm blades from the original Cyberpunk teaser feels viscous and fast paced. I felt myself losing humanity by seeking out fights just to dice people up after I bought the arm blades. Stealth is also a big part of the story missions, and it's not innovative but that's fine.

Yeah there are bugs. I've been mostly able to ignore them, but I had to reload a save once because a character wouldn't talk to me and had to delete another because I would load the save and already be attacked when I had saved in stealth. Other than that, some UI elements or effects don't go away without a reload. Characters don't show up in cutscenes, rarely. Cars in cutscenes will sometimes start in the wrong place and destroy everything in their path to get to the right place quickly. Sometimes I can't stand up from crouching when a character starts speaking. Lots of minor things. Nothing really annoyed me though, you can overlook it. A lot of it has been ironed out over the years.

There are some delays between inputs and the actions they are supposed to perform, but most of it has been fixed since launch.

When I first played through, the balancing was weird. I quickly became capable of totally destroying any combat encounter in the first area within a few hours, but sometimes adjacent areas were 4x stronger than me even 15 hours later. This is made worse by the fact that enemies can take a whole mag to kill but two sword strikes. I can't tell if that's because my build is sufficiently developed or guns are just really weak. This has been addressed since launch but I haven't experienced the new systems. Crafting is still poorly executed with materials, junk, and money having very strange pacing and poor interactions with other systems

I don't like fast travel in this game. I generally try to drive since Night City is so pretty. But the travel points are everywhere so I always feel like I can just walk somewhere until I find one, which never ends up being true so I just miss out on driving. But that's a personal thing. I'd be fine with removing fast travel altogether. The city doesn't take long enough to drive around to warrant it.

There are like 4 interesting cybernetic upgrades. There are missed opportunities to integrate the skill tree and cybernetics, for sure. They don't feel like distinct systems, one just requires money. The skill tree does not give you enough points with which to explore it. A complete build will be unable to fully master combat and actually use crafting, for example.

If I see one more lore book I've already read, I stg... They never show up as "read" or "collected" in the world, and they're everywhere so it's very cluttered.


Performance and bugs aren't really a problem for me with my playstyle (stealth/blades). The characters and the story are delivered very well, partially carried by the extremely detailed character animations. Story and dialogue are the main focus so the combat and balance are kinda wacky. The world is gorgeous and rich in culture, even if it's less interactable or intelligent then you'd hope. None of my gameplay concerns are major or couldn't be fixed with a patch.

[h1]-- FOREWORD --[/h1] [b]The story in the main game and the side quests are good by any literary standard. I would recommend this game just for that, even if it didn't have any visual qualities, or any gameplay at all.[/b] I have one hundred-percented all locations, and I have all of the completionist achievements that matter. [b]The open world of Cyberpunk is phenomenal.[/b] It feels like a real city. I get lost in it (both literally and immersively) and I have spent tens of hours after every objective was done just running through areas I thought I had never been to and uncovering unmarked quests or stories hidden throughout the world. There are times while playing this game that I genuinely felt more a denizen of Night City than of the real world. [b]Absolute immersion, real beauty.[/b] This is among the best games ever made and it will never receive that respect because of the cultural reception at launch which is an absolute pity. [h1]-- PERFORMANCE --[/h1] As the game has ironed out visual optimization, my performance has actually worsened since launch. I'm playing on an R5 2600X with a GTX 1060 3GB, 32 GBs of RAM on Medium settings 1080p. I get something between 25-45 frames, but at launch I almost always had above 30. Normally, I don't play games below 60 fps on PC but for Cyberpunk I make an exception. [b]The game looks phenomenal,[/b] and I use a blade/stealth build, which doesn't require high fps to execute well. [b]Shooting guns is miserable[/b] when I have to. [h1]-- THE GOOD --[/h1] Cyberpunk is the first game I've ever seen nail the facial animations [i]( I have since played Outriders and Fallen Order which do them well, but still not as good)[/i]. In many games, even the most detailed models with high quality mocap can have faces that look totally flat (for example: even with all its charm, Hellblade's animations are flaky 30% of the time). I mention this because it drives a lot of what the game does well. The game was about 50% dialogue for the first 10 hours, and the story is what seems to have gotten the most development attention after the open world. I feel like I've been able to connect to these characters a lot more because [b]I can actually empathize with what they feel.[/b] They fidget in their seats, cross their legs, adjust their stance. Along with some solid voice acting, it all leads to [b]highly immersive conversations.[/b] The world of Cyberpunk, beyond just being gorgeous, is also [b]dense and filled with detail[/b]. Sure, almost all buildings you can't walk into, but there are a ton you can and all of them are overly detailed. The NPCs aren't great but their presence along with advertisements and culture helps make the city feel alive, rather than a bunch of plasticky polygons, even if some of the taller buildings and highways start to look like that. Advertisements and environmental stories cover most alleys. Performance issues have kinda left me unable to enjoy gun combat so far, but I play with the blades and that is still a ton of fun. The blunt melee looks really bad but slicing somebody up with a katana or those arm blades from the original Cyberpunk teaser feels viscous and fast paced. I felt myself losing humanity by seeking out fights just to dice people up after I bought the arm blades. Stealth is also a big part of the story missions, and it's not innovative but that's fine. [h1]-- THE BAD --[/h1] Yeah [b]there are bugs.[/b] I've been mostly able to ignore them, but I had to reload a save once because a character wouldn't talk to me and had to delete another because I would load the save and already be attacked when I had saved in stealth. Other than that, some UI elements or effects don't go away without a reload. Characters don't show up in cutscenes, rarely. Cars in cutscenes will sometimes start in the wrong place and destroy everything in their path to get to the right place quickly. Sometimes I can't stand up from crouching when a character starts speaking. Lots of minor things. Nothing really annoyed me though, you can overlook it. A lot of it has been ironed out over the years. There are some delays between inputs and the actions they are supposed to perform, but most of it has been fixed since launch. When I first played through, the [b]balancing was weird[/b]. I quickly became capable of totally destroying any combat encounter in the first area within a few hours, but sometimes adjacent areas were 4x stronger than me even 15 hours later. This is made worse by the fact that enemies can take a whole mag to kill but two sword strikes. I can't tell if that's because my build is sufficiently developed or guns are just really weak. This has been addressed since launch but I haven't experienced the new systems. Crafting is still poorly executed with materials, junk, and money having very strange pacing and poor interactions with other systems I don't like fast travel in this game. I generally try to drive since Night City is so pretty. But the travel points are everywhere so I always feel like I can just walk somewhere until I find one, which never ends up being true so I just miss out on driving. But that's a personal thing. I'd be fine with removing fast travel altogether. The city doesn't take long enough to drive around to warrant it. There are like 4 interesting cybernetic upgrades. There are [b]missed opportunities to integrate the skill tree and cybernetics[/b], for sure. They don't feel like distinct systems, one just requires money. The skill tree does not give you enough points with which to explore it. A complete build will be unable to fully master combat and actually use crafting, for example. If I see one more lore book I've already read, I stg... They never show up as "read" or "collected" in the world, and they're everywhere so it's very cluttered. [h1]-- SUMMARY --[/h1] Performance and bugs aren't really a problem for me with my playstyle (stealth/blades). The [b]characters and the story are delivered very well[/b], partially carried by the extremely detailed character animations. Story and dialogue are the main focus so the [b]combat and balance are kinda wacky[/b]. The [b]world is gorgeous and rich in culture[/b], even if it's less interactable or intelligent then you'd hope. None of my gameplay concerns are major or couldn't be fixed with a patch.