14th of June 2026

Cyberpunk 2077

As a kid in the mid '90s I actually played the original roleplaying game, Cyberpunk 2020, on a few occasions with a relative. Not that I'd call myself an oldskool fan or anything, but at least I had some prior knowledge of the universe. Naturally then I was curious enough to play Cyberpunk 2077 the second it was released; and it was probably the buggiest launch I've ever come across. The performance itself was fine; the game ran well, took a second to load and never crashed, but the sheer amount of bugs was a constant distraction. Over the years the game has more or less been fixed, new features have been added, the ability system has been overhauled, a new expansion has been released, and so on. So, I replayed the game along with the expansion, Phantom Liberty, a while back.

My biggest problem with the game always was the RPG type of combat system. Everything is a bullet sponge, and after every encounter there are a dozen items lying on the ground, including guns. This is one of those Borderlands type of games where you've got a zillion variations of the same gun, each with slightly different stats, which makes for a tedious experience. And you can't really ignore it either, as then you'd quickly find yourself underpowered. Sure, with the right tools and "build" you can melt your enemies away, but this takes time, so unless you want to spend hours grinding, you're gonna be at the end of the game by the time your "build" is more or less what you want it to be.
At least you've got a pretty comprehensive skill tree system whereby you can focus on the things you want. The downside is that it takes a long time for you to grow into your desired character. But once you become that character, you can slice and dice enemies at will with melee weapons, or perhaps kill them all remotely with a Netrunner build without them ever knowing you were there. This is good for people who want to spend a lot of time with the game, tinkering with all sorts of possible builds.
But oh how disappointing it is to have a game like this with such a terrible combat system. Basically all assault rifles, submachineguns and shotguns are useless peashooters. And despite everything being a bullet sponge, the game is still incredibly easy even on the hardest skill setting. At least there's a nice amount of blood and torn bodyparts, but because of the RPG mechanics the shooting never really feels satisfying. At least many missions provide multiple ways and paths toward the enemy, but stealth options remain limited and ineffective unless you invest heavily in those perks.

Beyond this rather significant deficiency, the rest of the game is really good - with some not entirely insignificant caveats. Night City itself is gorgeous, a marvel of game design in many ways. Every district of the city has its unique theme and a bunch of memorable landmarks. There are so many places that you'll never come across unless you go out of your way to search every nook and cranny. Graphics are sharp and character models, especially those of women, look really good. (Hint in case the game's graphics look blurry on an AMD system: Turn on the "Native AA" setting under Resolution Scaling/AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3.0.) Only raytracing/path tracing is underwhelming, but then again so it is in pretty much any game (as realistically modern games can utilize raytracing only in moderate amounts). (As an example, here's the same scene without ray tracing, with ray tracing and with path tracing.) Driving feels a bit too weightless, but it's still fun to just drive around and see what the city's got to offer. The game's day-and-night cycle also felt pretty well tuned; the cycle is noticeably slower than in Rockstar Games games where it's so fast that it's detrimental to the experience. The weather system is a bit boring though, but hey, it's a desert. The traffic system was a bit buggy at lauch, but it works better now - plus they added autodriving and public transportation features. The police behaved weird when the game was released, with the mechanics being clunky and not threatening. It's a bit better now, but the police are still more of an annoyance rather than something to be wary of like in GTA.

Night City was of course never going to meet some people's expectations that were completely out of whack, such as expecting being able to enter every building and multiple apartments (what for?). That being said, the game does lack side activities. There are no minigames, no activities, and spontaneous encounters are mostly just firefights. Personally I couldn't care less, but many do and I admit that having these as an option would make the game world feel more immersive. There's nothing interesting to buy at stores; this is one of those games where it's pointless to buy anything as you'll have better stuff lying on the ground soon anyway. There's a lot of junk in your inventory - and not just the literal junk but scopes, attachments and Mickey Mouse consumable items that yield tiny benefits and that should have been left out of the game entirely. It's also annoying to come across the same PDA for the millionth time; the game should remember the PDAs you have already viewed and stop offering them. At least some features have been added, such as the ability to purchase multiple apartments AND have (rather meh) dates with your love interest.

The meat of the game is its story. The protagonist, V, ends up with a chip in her (or his) head that happens to house the mental image of Johnny Silverhand (Keanu Reeves), an anarchist-rock-star-cum-terrorist who decades before the events of the game blew up a company headquarters with a nuclear weapon. The chip is also slowly killing you. The story is immersive, and it's always viewed from your 1st-person perspective (like Half-Life). Even sidequests that seem menial at first often dive deep into the lore and politics of the city. This being Cyberpunk, don't expect good endings or happy feelings. Even when you try to do good, you often end up hurting someone. The game is packed full of memorable and life-like characters (with great-looking character models and fantastic voiceacting across the board as well). Basically everyone is flawed, often in several ways, but almost no one is clear-cut evil or a saint. Many of the choices you get to make can affect the game's events in rather significant ways. We're not talking about elaborate branching storylines (that'd be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to develop) but considerably different resolutions to story events that can either open up or close off new quests. A lot of this you might not even realize while playing until you take a look at Cyberpunk Fandom wiki and see how differently things could have turned out depending on your decisions. The game also has very little cheap fetch quests.
At the beginning of the game you get to choose a Lifepath for your character. This is more of a role-playing thing, as it doesn't really make much difference gameplay-wise aside from the first 30 minutes or so and some additional dialog options along the way. Not that it'd be feasible to have each path be a considerably different experience (given time and money constraints), but they sure as hell hyped up the feature that ended up being less of a path and more like a simple character background.

The game's sole expansion, Phantom Liberty, takes place within an enclosed area of Night City called Dog City, an enclave with its own laws, rules and customs. A plane carrying the president of whatever remains of the United States is shot down and V has to help her. This is one of the best and most ambitious expansions ever. Dog Town is its own miniature Night City filled with morally ambiguous and shady and yet interesting characters. You eventually have to make a hard choice between the expansion's two deliciously well-crafted main NPCs. Sidequests present you with more tough choices. The expansion can also give you a "good" ending for the base game, but in true Cyberpunk fashion it doesn't come without a heavy cost. Combat still sucks, but at least there are some cool combat setpieces here and there; plus you finally get your hands on a proper stealth weapon.

Conclusion: Despite RPG mechanics that to me ruin the combat (no small part of the game!) and make several other aspects of the game feel tedious, the game's story, world and characters suck you right in and make for a truly immersive and engaging experience. Even sidequests are packed full of memorable moments and tough, often morally ambiguous choices. The game simply refuses to give you happy resolutions, save maybe for a few smaller sidequests. The Phantom Liberty expansion feels like an even more refined experience - as expansions often are, with developers having learned from their mistakes and being able to better focus on a more contained experience. I wouldn't mind seeing more expansions for this game: Who knows, maybe they had plans for more but probably ended up wasting too many resources on fixing the base game.