Goooooooood morning Night City~ Ok I know I’m not there right now, I’m writing this article about it, but man is this game something.

Despite the mixed opinions this game as gotten, memes aside, after a thorough playthrough of this game. I’ve obtained every ending possible and nearly 100% completed the game. Apparently CDPR is already working on FREE DLC for the game as well (Check that link back there) and while there isn’t much about that at the moment, the game as of now is still a fun ride that had me streaming in excess of 10-12 hours at a time. Mileage may vary but look at putting in around 60-75 hours for a full playthrough of this one.

I will warn any readers that this article will contain MINOR spoilers so I can better explain the story elements and how it ties into the game and some of my own opinions on them, but don’t worry the juicy goodness will be kept in tact if you have yet to explore this marvelous city.

So without further ado, let’s jump into this review on PC~

Gameplay

Cyberpunk takes on an open world style, ranging from FPS to third person action and mini games to keep it interesting. Mainly any action on foot will usually be from first person while driving vehicles will be either first or third person.

Your character, V, has a variety of skills and the decision on what you’d like to focus on can be a tricky one. Do you decide to go all in on swords and melee attacks? Maybe have some stealth or hacking techniques to back you up? Or maybe gunplay is your style and you want to craft the deadliest weapons and other items possible to aid you.

There are 5 attributes to use. Body, Intelligence, Cool, Technical Ability and Reflexes. Each tree has it’s own perks and the more you level each one, the more abilities you gain access to with a max level of 20 for each tree as well as increasing attributes that each tree represents.

To summarize what each attribute does:
Body – Strength, melee attacks, HP and heavy guns
Reflexes – Swords, light guns and fast attack speed
Technical Ability – Crafting, ability to make higher tier items and effectiveness of weapons
Intelligence – Hacking ability, more intelligence means more uses of memory or slots to use hacking abilities as well as higher level abilities
Cool – Stealth and a special tier of perks known as cold blooded.

**All attributes can also trigger special dialogue options if you have the level required.

Given though that the max level is 50 you can only have so many points, but there are ways to get points other than leveling up such as using these attribbutes for other things in the game such as crafting and hacking devices.

Along with leveling up your attributes, each one will allow you to unlock special areas that would be restricted otherwise. This also includes certain pieces of cyberware that may require certain ability levels to be able to equip.

Another thing to mention is that along with your level you also have another level known as ‘Street Cred’ essentially a reputation meter. This levels up as you perform missions and side jobs as well as making various decisions in the game that will impact people’s perception of V. Leveling up street cred is important as it will allow you access to special items to buy and certain missions.

Speaking of special items, certain weapons have attachments that unlock abilities for the weapon. For example, there is a feature called SMART targeting on assault rifles that allows the gun to shoot homing rounds that lock onto any enemy within sight.

Certain weapon abilities also reflect a character ability and can become even stronger if that ability is leveled higher.

Another aspect of the game is the ability to augment V with cyber parts that will enhance his body. You can find parts for about every part of your body, minus uh… well let’s not go there, and give yourself a much needed advantage in every aspect of the game. From being able to jump higher to shooting rockets out of your arms and electrocuting enemies that get to close too you make for many possibilities for annihilating enemies.

Lastly, it is important to consider how you want to level your character as there is no way to reset your abilities, however you can reset your perks.

Music

With this portion of the review, I won’t be able to give a concise review as when I streamed the game I disabled copy-right protected music… HOWEVER even with that being said, the soundtrack is nothing short of chilling, fierce and just adrenaline pumping goodness.

Even the intro that blazes The Rebel Path gets you engaged immediately, anticipating what is about to go down today in good ol’ Night City. The combat music definitely takes it to a high point with screeching synths and chaotic rhythms everywhere as you try to focus on everything that’s actively trying to kill you in that moment. See example A here -> LINK

Honestly, the entire soundtrack is worth listening to just to catch a vibe of how dark the future can be with all the enhancements corrupting society and people being taken advantage of by mega corporations… woah, sorry I should be saving that for the story portion of the review.

Story/Characters

Alright ladies and gents, this is where things are gonna get a little bumpy. So let me go ahead and get this out of the way.

MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD

Ok, now that I got that out there, use the link here to skip this part of the review (Jump to next portion of the review here)

So without going too much into detail, your character is V. As the game begins you are able to choose from three origin stories.

Each path will determine V’s origin story as well as who he knows early on in the game.

Whichever decision you decide, you will have access to special dialogue depending on which story you pick. I haven’t had a chance to try all three yet, but from what I can reason you will arrive at the same main story in the same scenario regardless of what you pick, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have different ways of progressing through the game because you picked one story over the other so it is very much looking into for additional playthroughs.

The game is divided into different types of missions. You have story missions, side missions and jobs from fixers, essentially contractors who give V quick missions. With the exception of main story missions, side missions are what allow V to interact with important characters who will play a role in the main story if V decides properly and they help later on.

There will be periods in the game where you cannot progress in the main story and will have to spend time doing other missions such as side missions, but hopefully you’ll do all of them anyway since that builds a rich character interaction and really fleshes out character progression for V.

Don’t worry, the romance for those who are curious is indeed ‘next level’ in a sense. While there are a limited amount of people to romance as V, some may only be romanced by male or female V…. I seriously want to know why male V can’t romance Judy, but that’s my personal gripe 🙁

Depending on how in depth V is with other characters they may be able to provide assistance in major story missions, so don’t miss out 😉

Another interesting aspect that I enjoyed about the game was the use of Tarot cards to illustrate various characters and themes in the game.

Misty, another character in the game, will bring this up to V at some point and mention it could very well determine his destiny in Night City, I won’t get too much more into it other than that, but if you are familiar with the cards it can be pretty interesting figuring out what sort of path you’ll ultimately walk.

Lastly, the question will ultimately come down to who will V run with in Night City? The choice will determine his fate as well as his friends, enemies and the very being of Night City… so choose wisely.

Graphics/Performance

Now this next section will briefly cover what most people are upset with and how the game was handled on release, but first off…

THIS GAME LOOKS F***ING AMAZING

There is no doubt in my mind, Cyberpunk 2077 has set the bar for next gen gaming/graphics and it’s pretty darn high. For those that may not know, CD-Projekt Red made The Witcher. That game that when it first game out on PC people were using it as a benchmark game for the latest graphic cards on PC at the time (And yes this did happen for all 3 of them).

It’s definitely fair to say that this game will make your PC/Console run hoooooot. Unfortunately, previous gen consoles (PS4/XBOX1) are struggling to run the game smoothly and while CDPR is working hard on patching the game, it could’ve used a bit more time in the oven.

For those who play the ps4 version on ps5 however, there doesn’t seem to be many issues with it on the newest consoles and for those with the PC specs this game isn’t terribly difficult to run either… but there are the PC share of issues as well.

One issue I ran into a good bit was memory leaks, while it wasn’t a big deal I did have to restart my game every few hours due to the frame rate dropping from a cozy 90 FPS on high settings all the way to 45-50 frames after playing 3-4 hours.

Even after trying to turn down settings I still had similar results, but I do notice as future patches are released the game continues to improve more in that aspect. Thankfully if you run a NVIDIA card, DLSS can literally save your game performance if you don’t mind the grainy filter.

In addition to performance issues, the game does have it’s share of visual glitches and sometimes can break the game, crash your pc, or one of those ‘Skyrim’ issues where a quest may not progress. Usually the latter can be fixed by reloading your file… so use that quicksave button.

To be fair, some of these glitches I did find highly amusing and while it didn’t make me like the game less, there were definitely a few things the game needed touching up on before it was released.

Summary

To wrap up this wonderfully messy but mind breaking next gen masterpiece, I started this game without high expectations and was rewarded with addicting gameplay, rich and detailed story and character progression and the question of what character am I going to make next?

I can expect CDPR to make further changes to the game over time and improve the overall quality so that everyone can enjoy the game the way it was meant to be, and with more free DLC on the way it’ll only be a matter of time before I’m taking another trip back to Night City for one of the wildest game play experiences I’ve witnessed.

If the future of gaming, albeit with some more testing and time for the game to be bug free, is gonna look like this… well I won’t be putting down my mouse and keyboard for a long time~






As always,
Brother Ghesh out~