A controversial launch marred it, a big-time turnaround with numerous subsequent patches aided by a successful anime tie-in redeemed it, and now Cyberpunk 2077 is regarded as another modern classic from CD Projekt Red. But is there anything here for me as someone jaded by open world design that focuses more on volume than quality, or is it done in once again by its own hubris?
Cyberpunk 2077 was a public relations disaster when it launched, for a variety of reasons. Whether completely unnecessary health hazards to epileptic people, alleged exploitation of CDPR employees (later offset by a suspiciously large number of positive employee reviews appearing to offset negative ones), or a conveniently timed data breach that may or may not have been staged for publicity, the game was a pretty big font of negativity when it launched and continued to be so for some time after. Of course, it had its defenders too; mostly people who decided it was the best game of all time years before they ever played a single second of it and continued to do so in spite of its horrifically buggy design and poor performance.
I passed it for several years for all those reasons, as well as just not enjoying the Witcher games at all. Mostly because rather than showing you tangible evidence of themes and ideas and letting you draw your own conclusions, they instead sit you down every five minutes to smugly tell you all about how intelligent and important and poignant and progressive and visionary they're being, all while showing disappointingly little in the way of innovative design, compelling writing or interesting gameplay. I mean, unless you count "follow quest marker and push confirm button until it says you've finished it" design, permanently botchable quests, no hard saves and guessing at which dialog options will lead you to a bad ending 40+ hours later as compelling; I certainly don't. It's the equivalent of a pretentious film student roping you into watching his 20-minute magnum opus and then spending three hours explaining all the symbolism in extreme detail to make sure you get it. Not because they have any novel ideas or anything poignant to say, but because they desperately want you to admire and worship them, preferably through your wallet.
Cyberpunk (the heavily-patched version) at least has more to offer in terms of gameplay than Witcher does. Built as a gigantic open world game in a sprawling city, it feels like a logical mashup of elements from Grand Theft Auto, Deus Ex, Borderlands and Watch_Dogs. You drive around, you get into fights with hostile NPCs, evade the cops, and complete various side missions, getting different dialog and rewards depending on your approach. Going in guns blazing, using stealth to disable enemies and hacking to create distractions or destroy targets (NPCs and mundane objects like air conditioners, lights and even oil barrels can be "hacked" with destructive results, which makes little sense to me). There's also semi-randomized loot in the form of armors and weapons with various random attributes and stat bonuses, and you get core stat upgrades and perks depending on your playstyle. You can install implants to improve your character as well, either finding them about the world or ripping them off dead gangers and psychos; so long as you have the cash to install them, of course.
Of course, balancing all these elements out is never an easy job in a sprawling open-ended game like this, and Cyberpunk... doesn't really do a great job. I mostly stuck to melee weapons as they consistently drop enemies in two or three hits, whereas even an average thug can absorb half a magazine of assault rifle ammo or more without even flinching. Combat doesn't feel good in general either, with some very floaty movement, weightless action that lacks any visceral impact and strange hit detection at times - I've visibly leapt backwards from a boss enemy, saw their weapon fly right past me and still taken damage, while I've swung at them multiple times while they're a foot away and dead center on screen and never seem to land a hit when it counts. Some of the earliest powers you get also afford you health regeneration at a pretty substantial rate, and you get free regenerating grenades and emergency health packs, so as long as you don't take too much damage at once you're pretty difficult to actually kill.
Dialog in the game is also considerably more streamlined than most. Outside of scripted cutscenes you're not locked into a separate dialog screen, instead just getting options for what to say next depending on the character you're currently facing. There's usually little choice in these - you can generally just ask a second or third option for a bit more information before you're forced to pick the first one in order to progress to the next part of the dialog and ultimately accept or decline a mission; Ultima-level deep conversations these are not. They're also punctuated with a lot of V's smarmy dialog and characters bouncing constant comic book one-liners off you, which is cute for a bit but gets grating when they have to cram it into every single exchange. Hell, they never manage to turn it off even during tense moments.
Presentation wise I can't say I like the game much even when it is performing well. The dialog is all well-acted and some of the radio tracks are honestly pretty catchy, but it's just not a pleasant game to look at. The whole world is dingy, grimy and utilizes a pretty garish color palette and overbearing harsh lighting. I suppose it fits the cyberpunk aesthetic in that regard, but it does get a little annoying when there's bright neon/sun glare in your eyes every 2 seconds and all your targets just blend into the constant environmental haze and clashing colors. The only thing that does stand out are the weapons, which are painted in bright yellows, purples and blues; they look more like Super Soakers and Nerf toys than anything that can do harm. It all controls decently enough with a controller, though if you're playing the Switch 2 version you can also utilize gimmicky Wii-style motion controls with detached joycons. I mostly just stuck to the Pro Controller; normally I'm not a fan of twin stick aiming but in conjunction with axis aiming it's good enough.
Cyberpunk 2077 is relatively competent at everything it does, but nothing it does is very unique. It just feels like a mish-mash of every popular open world game and futuristic action-RPG made in the last 25 years, cynically engineered for maximum marketability and play time with little thought spared for giving it any identity of its own. The gameplay kept me amused for a few hours, but with the repetitive setup, bare-bones core story and combat, uninteresting characters and dialog that's more tedious than fun, I got bored of it well before the end. It's the most competent CDPR project yet in terms of design; unfortunately being competent and being captivating are two very different things, and CDPR still has yet to get a grasp on how to do the latter well.
Developer: CD Projekt Red
Publisher: CD Projekt
Released: 2020, 2022, 2025
Platform: PlayStation 4, PC, XBox One, PlayStation 5, XBox Series, Switch 2, macOS
Recommended Version: Definitely avoid the early releases on PS4 and XBox One and go for one of the newer versions instead, or the PC port if you have a powerful enough machine. The Switch 2 version is surprisingly solid though, with a smooth framerate and overall good performance.