I first booted up Cyberpunk 2077 about a month post-release at the end of 2020. This was back during the COVID-era (which I cannot believe was already 5 years ago, are you joking?) and Cyberpunk was probably the most-hyped game since No Man’s Sky or GTA V. I remember you couldn’t walk anywhere without seeing adverts for it. And following its release, the online discourse went from absolutely insane levels of excitement to equally crazy levels of vitriol.
One of the things which is often kind of hilarious about internet discourse is how easily people buy into the bubble of the environments they are in. I remember vividly hearing about how much of a disaster the launch was, how everyone was refunding the game in droves, how people were turning it on, immediately getting bugged and glitched to death and quitting forever.
Never mind the fact that Cyberpunk retains its position as one of the very few games to ever break 1 million concurrent players on Steam (even beating out Elden Ring) and its current sales figures are supposedly around 30 million units (put in context, internet darling Baldur’s Gate 3 has sold 15 million units at time of writing). By every actual metric, Cyberpunk’s release was an absolutely eye-watering success.
Even despite that though, it can’t quite shake the shadow of its “disastrous” release for me, to be frank I was one of the people who bounced off it because of precisely some of the reasons I mentioned. I suffered awful performance issues (admittedly I have a 2070 card, which is potentially on the lower end for handling it, but still), repeated bugs and glitches and in particular remember walking the streets of Night City surrounded by no-fewer than 7 copies of the same person (in a city where uniqueness of the NPCs was practically a selling point).
This wasn’t what really killed it for me though. What killed it for me was the quest map. I remember very swiftly completing the first couple of major story missions and my map instantly being filled with about 1000 different mini side-jobs and “NCPD hustles”, and I was so overwhelmed in my completionist state of mind that after trying to gradually clear the map of them for 20 hours I just gave up (before even meeting Panam just to add context here).
It took the release of Phantom Liberty for me to come back to the game and actually give it the attention and time it deserves. Because, to preface a lot of the whining that is about to happen, I do believe it deserves attention, acclaim and time in decent measure. It never deserved the absolutely over-the-top hate it received on release (quite frankly, very few games ever do deserve as much as they get) while it definitely did deserve at least most of its critical approval.
Another tiny aside here before I get into the rest of my review, my memory of the original build of Cyberpunk is extremely poor, so unfortunately, I cannot make any kind of decent comparison between it and Phantom Liberty. A lot of what I will be talking about then will in fact be improvements and changes brought by the DLC, rather than what was present in the base game. However, just to make it clear, I AM aware that the DLC and Patch 2.0 introduced SIGNIFICANT QOL changes to the gameplay which made it more fun, more accessible and less frustrating to play in equal measure.
Let’s start with the basics, Cyberpunk 2077 is a first-person shooter, open-world RPG. It is a dystopian near-future setting in which advanced technology and computers are integrated into every aspect of daily life, the world order has shattered and daily rule is no longer really in the hands of governments but instead gigantic multinational big tech corporations. It is a harsh, depressing world, where Corpo greed is the name of the day and the lives of every individual on the planet seem to be at the daily whim of everyone from gang members, the police, mega-corps, the governments and militaries, with very little separating each of the different factions.
I’m gonna come in here and say, this is an extremely compelling and fascinating Universe. One which seems worryingly close to reality in days of limited online privacy, data collection and AI development. It is deep, colourful, interesting and the world-building on display by CD Projekt Red is some of the absolute best in the business. It is also FUCKING depressing. Almost by definition in fact. Everyone in Cyberpunk settings is one of: a quintessentially greedy cunt with an agenda who will walk over the corpses of a continent AND all their kittens just to get a few extra quid, they are about to be driven mad by all of the cybernetic augmentation they’ve put into themselves, or they are perhaps the one rare individual with a heart of gold whose presence is only useful because it is necessary for the plot to murder them brutally to provide motivation.
And I do not like it.
I have never been a fan of edgelord settings where there is no room for optimism, hope, or nice things (unless it’s done kind-of ironically like 40K). So, I will say right here and now that Cyberpunk 2077 had an uphill battle with me against its own literal premise. It’s something which will probably come up again in this review, but certain major story beats which were simply in-keeping with the game’s tone and theme fell flat for me because I was just annoyed at all the characters who were involved in the decision making.
In this crazy world you take on the role of V, a new mercenary, gun-for-hire on the scene of Night City (a fictional city on the West Coast of what was the USA). Through some shady underground dealings (of which there is no other kind on Night City) he ends up in possession of a high-tech, mystical computer chip in his head which means he has to share his brain with Johnny Silverhand (Keanu Reeves), a rebel and rock-star from like… 100 years ago? 10 years ago? It was never really clear to me… And this same chip is basically destroying V’s mind.
Keanu is probably one of the biggest draws of the game and is a genuinely fascinating character. When you first meet him, unsure if he’s a hallucination brought on by cyberpsychosis or anything else, he is basically a bat-shit insane terrorist. He died in the process of detonating a nuclear bomb inside the headquarters of Arasaka (the biggest and baddest of the mega-corps).
I feel like I need to say that again, so it sinks in. While admittedly yes, mega-corps are basically the “bad guys” of the game who trade lives and souls without a single shred of guilt, all to add another few decimal points to their multi-trillion-eurodollar profits. They are more-or-less genuinely evil. And so, in fighting them, this dude detonates a NUCLEAR BOMB in a major population centre.
Even if you are a staunch “eat-the-rich”, “dismantle-the-government”, “row-row-fight-the-power” type of person, I hope you will agree: this makes Johnny a BAD GUY. He is a BADDIE.
And yet… If you take the more forgiving and understanding dialogue options with him, gradually building a rapport, he becomes increasingly sympathetic and likeable. He’s also fucking hilarious, which I guess lends credence to the theory that you can get away with murder if you’re just kind of a good laugh? For me, he was a highlight of the game, even when he was being his over-the-top “everyone is a greedy sonofabitch only out for themselves” cynic, he was still fun to interact with. Even if that interaction was me rolling my eyes at the screen going “shut up Johnny”. It’s honestly fabulous and the development of his relationship with V, building towards mutual understanding and even respect is nothing short of masterful. Plus, the amount of times I found myself literally out loud saying “shut up Johnny” does say a lot about how engaging I found him.
His regular appearances in your psyche, commenting on people and places around you, and later on even interacting with those who knew him when he was alive, these are all some of the absolute top highlights of the game.
It is a common theme within the game that I found the characters just insanely engaging and compelling. From Panam, the sexy, sexy road-warrior lady who does sexy things because she is sexy, Judy the emo hacker girl, River the Police officer with the heart of gold in a city trying to tear him apart (Lisa), and then Phantom Liberty takes this to a new level with Songbird and Reed.
I also regularly found myself telling each of them to shut up for different reasons cause they all say absolutely retarded stuff at every turn, making me want to sit them down and be sensible humans for 5 seconds, but they were compelling as shit. The overall story and plot, driven largely by the interactions with these side characters is also equally super exciting and just bloody well written. Dialogue too, while the characters will occasionally just act in the most retarded ways because the setting demands it, their voice acting is impeccable and there’s a good reason I kept telling them OUT LOUD to shush.
Working through the game to become the biggest, baddest mercenary on the streets whilst trying to save your life from the Relic which is eating your brain from the inside, the main story missions were often exciting and fun and kept me on my toes. It is just a bit of a shame that I felt like the main story really understayed it’s welcome… There were like three main missions and then suddenly that was the end of the game. You do a main mission, branch off to do a bunch of the side character missions, another main mission and BOOM you’re in the end-game… It really felt like it didn’t have that much time to linger in the story. Which I mean is a genuine shame because I LOVED the story missions, they were invariably fucking absolutely awesome. Something about the parade mission still sticks with me just in terms of the style.
This is something which I feel haunts other aspects of the game too. There are numerous super interesting side jobs, not even provided by the major side characters, but additional side quests beyond them. They are often intriguing, fun and occasionally present some real genuine dilemmas and difficult decisions. And then also regularly seemed to finish very abruptly sort of 75% of the way through their stories. They would set up extremely intriguing scenarios of important politicians being brainwashed and deciding whether to tell them or not, an AI taxi company going mad and you having to figure out whether to repair or destroy it, and then a few others as well. And then once you make your decision, that it’s, story over. It’s deeply unsatisfying and never once failed to kind of kill the pace of the game for me.
I actually kind of want to attribute this to a style of writing that I feel is a bit too prevalent in media which takes itself too seriously. Where the writers will pose an interesting scenario, write a bit and then say “so what do YOU think happens next?” Y’know, posing the question of the situation. And I’d quite like it if occasionally I was actually told what YOU think happens next, Mr. Writer…
This isn’t to say they aren’t enjoyable in the moment and that there aren’t pockets of fun to be had, such as the vending machine who gains sentience of a kind, but I did regularly feel like I was being presented with super interesting things and being asked to interact with it and then the game goes “mm, that’s a hot take” and never brings it up again.
Outside of the writing, the game itself can be a lot of fun to play. Missions and combat were generally always a lot of fun and presented a pretty excellent array of options for being a cybernetically enhanced badass. Using my hacking skills to infect other dudes with viruses that made them legit kill themselves, and then watching that virus spread to others while I snipe the heads off a few others, it never stopped being satisfying. There’s also tech guns with homing bullets, classic run-and-gun antics, insane melee combat builds, crazy grenades, invisibility and fun stealth and hacking shenanigans. The options the game provides you with are awesome.
The gunplay as well works really well and felt really solid. To be blunt I don’t think I ever thought it was extremely special. I feel like some of the guns, actually particularly shotguns, just didn’t quite have the weight I wanted them too. Explosions in particular though somehow always felt a little bit weedy and ineffective, but it’s hard to really express why. Overall, it was at least diverting enough for 110-odd hours of play.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, the driving was just honestly ass. Cars, to a one, all felt super floaty and difficult to steer. They also felt weirdly BIG. Like… They just take up so much space in the road that it was impossible to get around them.
Where I think the game’s biggest flaw was though was its open world. Now I haven’t said it yet, but I should mention that Cyberpunk LOOKS incredible. The visuals of the game and the aesthetic are just peak game design. It looks stunning during the day and particularly insanely beautiful at night, the massive hologram adverts flying over Night City, illuminating the chrome. It’s a beautiful, beautiful game (although, weirdly, I feel like the facial mocap never quite matched the standards of the Witcher 3 for some reason).
So, it LOOKS beautiful, that’s out the way. It’s unfortunate that’s just a shiny veneer over a very, very empty world. Beyond the possibility of interrupting the police fighting gang members, there was never anything really that exciting to stumble across in the city. There were no “oh woowww” moments of discovery about having explored a particular direction and finding something super exciting. Actually, if anything, exploration felt like a legitimate waste of time. The world also felt very unreactive and unexciting. I still remember at one point walking through Pacifica and seeing an airship suddenly strafe a skyscraper. It was INSANELY cool. It’s… Just kind of shame that I then saw the same thing happen both the next times I was in Pacifica…
It felt like there was so many possibilities for little side activities and fun things to do and find, and the game just really didn’t provide you with any of them. I think, actually, most likely because they ran out of time. The biggest example of this is the brain dances (BDs). You are given the tools to view other people’s brain “recordings”, see what they saw and feel what they felt as they were recording. This comes up in several story beats. And there are places all over the city where you can actually buy BDs. Which don’t do anything. It really felt like there was a whole thing here planned which they simply never got around to.
Add to what I said before about driving in the city feeling actually really difficult: cars too big and also too awful to drive, and it means that there never really felt like there was any incentive to EVER explore the gorgeous world beyond using the fast travel to hop between quests.
This goes absolutely doubly for the Badlands. There is an absolutely massively vast stretch of open world beyond Night City which you can explore at your leisure and I just never did. It’s only thanks to a few missions that I saw the solar collectors, the polluted lakes, the massive hydroponic farms. None of these were things I stumbled across organically. These are legitimately massive and super-cool areas to discover, but there’s never any thrill of organic exploration there.
The comparison I most want to make here is that, in other games where “exploration” isn’t the name of the day, they make you explore the open world by making you have FUN in them. I’m thinking specifically of Grand Theft Auto. It just feels kind of unfortunate that everything I wanted the Cyberpunk open world to do, GTA does. And so, Cyberpunk just absolutely fails at being an open world game. I suspect at least part of this is because, again, the game takes itself a bit too seriously to allow you to go and have a fight with 1000 policemen while driving a tank.
That’s my hot take of the game by the way. Cyberpunk is just GTA which is taking itself a bit too seriously, to its own detriment.
As an afterthought to this I want to add that despite being a proponent of open worlds, maybe Cyberpunk is actually let down by being one. If it had been a series of interconnected hubs and missions, in a more Dishonored or Prey style, it might have suited it better and allowed the stories to shine a bit more. But as it is, it felt too diluted by the sprawling emptiness.
The last thing I want to touch on then is specifically Phantom Liberty. Phantom Liberty honestly features Cyberpunk at its absolute best and its worst. The central story of the DLC is fucking exceptional. It has intrigue, drama, high stakes, and it still slots so perfectly into the existing story of Cyberpunk. It also features Idris Elba absolutely phoning in the most boring voice performance as super-spy Reed. This expansion featured some of my absolute hands-down favourite missions in the whole game (particularly the one where you use some magical sci-fi face-changer).
This is Night City at its most extreme. An enclave of walls and cybersecurity somehow in the middle of the city, isolated by a megalomanical warlord who is kept in power by. a bizarre balance of crime syndicates, the police of Night City and even the Government of the NUSA. It’s a complicated and insane mess and it’s just incredible to explore and learn about. It also features some absolutely insanely cool visuals and awesome set-pieces.
Unfortunately, it also has the absolute worst parts of Cyberpunk. It was here that I lost my temper with the game world most. After doing a mission with Reed at the behest of super-hacker Song, I was told that they knew I didn’t trust Reed or Song and they would never trust each other. Which was absolutely news to me… I thought we were all getting along peachy-keen, but no. No, it’s a cyberpunk setting. Everyone hates everyone else and being nice ISN’T allowed. It’s just absolutely eye-rollingly ludicrous and legitimately ruined what should have been a really cool story for the whole DLC. Seriously, even the ending is a genuine highlight of the game, it’s absolutely kino and stressful and features one of the single toughest decisions I’ve ever made in a video game (one I would argue back and forth until my face turns blue) but also it’s somewhat poisoned by the fact that I simply don’t get why the decision is even necessary in the first place.
The DLC setting as well, a closed off section of Night City, super cool design and aesthetic, feeling reminiscent of a New Vegas type of thing with Cyberpunk vibes. But also it was impossible to drive around (whilst somehow also being too big to properly run around easily) not that exploring it felt like it ever turned up anything exciting anyway.
Despite my constant whining, I think it bares repeating that I think Cyberpunk is a genuinely good game. Maybe even a great one. Or at the very least, there are parts of a great game within it. Where it shines was in incredible aesthetic, compelling and exciting characters and genuinely thought-provoking and intriguing scenarios and missions in a world where “morals” are for the poor and weak. It’s a game of awesome design and combat, where the simple mechanical fun carries it forwards. It just felt so blanketed in an empty and boring open world, decisions made purely because “no, you can’t have nice things” and, frankly, a bit of an inability of the writers to actually take a stance on any of those interesting scenarios.
Oh, also, I didn’t like the ending either… But I’ll grant that they did actually finish that particular story!
RATING: 83/100
VERDICT: RECOMMENDED
| Pros | Cons |
| – Visually stunning, incredible world-building, feels like you are legitimately stepping into another world – Stellar characters and dialogue interactions, also some of the genuinely most difficult decision-making I’ve experienced in any game – Combat is largely solid, with a smattering of absolutely awesome – Keanu is pretty breathtaking even if he does keep asking “why do you come?” | – Open world is empty and dull, providing no incentive to actually explore the beautiful visuals – Characters are determined to be the most difficult and ridiculous versions of themselves to make sure that nobody could mistake them for good guys – Driving fucking suuuuuckkkks – Writing has some absolutely brilliant moments just ruined by some genuine edgelord moments |
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