Well....just beat the game. Put about 73 hours into it my quick thoughts...
Positives
- I absolutely loved the story, all of them, the side stories, the main arc, I loved the side characters. I thought Keanu would feel forced and the plot would center too much around him because of his star power but i thought he fit into the game perfectly. His character was probably one of the better characters he’s played throughout his career. He felt like a multi-dimensional, nuanced, and troubled real person. I loved almost all the performances in the game
-i loved the setting, they completely nailed the retro-futuristic cyberpunk dystopia. As someone who loves the genre, and probably has Snow Crash as one of his favorite books ever, I felt like i was actually in some of these stories I read. I don’t think anything will compare to night city as far as detail and aesthetic goes.
-the gameplay was fantastic to me. Even though I was upset about them taking out the pre-defined classes this game clearly punishes you for not focusing your efforts into one or two skill branches. Whether you go head on with melee, blast through walls with power weapons, or go full netrunner like i did, the game rewards your progression into a set class and makes you feel powerful. There is a lot of replay ability in that sense.
-1st person did end up feeling very immersive to me after my complaints about them cutting out 3rd person cutscenes and not having 3rd person in general. I’m happy with this as it feels very distinct from witcher. It feels like a game that can stand on its own and not just a reskinned version of their popular game.
-sidequest are top notch, some of them felt like full length movies with how they are presented, this is something CDPR carried over from witcher which very few other game designers have yet to implement in their open world games. I’m still thinking about how good one of them is and how it could be a full game itself
Negatives
-the game is incredibly rough around the edges. I don’t really mind the buggy ness some of its even funny sometimes but, overall the game needed polish. The crashes were unacceptable on the ps5. I can deal with jank, but interrupting progress is annoying, and my biggest pet peeve.
-stuff they showed in the 2018 gameplay i was excited about that didn’t make the cut. While this is the public and my own fault because they did have a disclaimer saying that all this stuff can change at the bottom, some of it was really cool and I’m kinda mad it didn’t end up in the game. The portion of V sneaking up to the guy and doing the environmental take down by muffling the gunshot noise in the water. The actual inhaler that slows down time which i thought would be a common thing, the wall climbing, etc. It kinda is what it is though, thats all game development
-continuation: my expectations like others were higher than they should have been. I was thinking that v would be able to end up looking like maelstrom or the animals with enough cyberware mods but that was just me thinking what if. I also thought there would be more romance options
-the role playing aspects were underwhelming. No customization after the initial character creation, not a lot of romance options, (although the couple they have are really well done), choices you make aren’t that big although there were a few surprises, i expected more out of the gang affiliations, more of an opening sequence for your backstory, more player driven dialogue, etc. It was all a bit undercooked.
-while i didn’t want it to be gta, the wanted system is lackluster, especially after seeing the opening of police in the airship gunning down a small gang of people. They made them seem like you should be really fearful of them but nothing came of it, you dont even have much missions where the police are involved.
-cars still handled like shyt even by the end. Motorcycles were the most convenient thing to use.
-main story could have been a bit longer. By shortening it to appease casual players they are basically telling people to hurry through the main story and be done with it, while the sidequest is where the real shyt is going down. This was the same thing in witcher, the side stories were a lot of times way better than what was going on in the main story (look for ciri, look for dandelion, look for...)
Overall i had a lot of fun with the game, and it was probably the most captivating and engrossing gaming experience I’ve had with a game all year. I haven’t put this many hours into a game in a while and still I’m thinking about starting a new game once they release new game plus and come out with the ps5 update. If CDPR can mange to iron out the kinks and add a bunch of QoL improvements, and DLC this might end up one my favorite rpgs of all time.
As of right now, on a scale from 1-100 I’d give it an
87.
If they come out with expansions on the level of witcher 3 that can easily go way up.
And with that I’m out of this thread!
