Doesn’t matter, the answer stands
Huh. That’s a pretty bold claim. I guess I’ll try to get in the mood for checking it out in 2023, so I’ll find out for myself.
This is correct.
Or, if you’d like to have more tempered expectations:
This is not Witcher 3 with guns. If you set your expectations on the RPG / meaningful choice a bit lower, there’s a pretty good game to be found, especially after all of the additional work that’s been put in post-release. There’s some great stories in the game, some very fun gunplay/combat, options for how you wish to approach the various challenges, and lots of open world “stuff” if that’s your thing.
It’s definite worth the time to play, but for me it didn’t hit the level of the best of the best - I’m not going to think about this game years later in the same way I do W3, RDR2, or Prey (Prey is probably just my own particular jam that few other people will share.)
Cyberpunk 2077 has rather excellent combat in general and a fabulous environment. It’s more of a shooter with a strong narrative and robust RPG components than, say, an RPG with lots of combat. Witcher 3 has much less satisfying combat IMO and a far better narrative and RPG structure. Both are great for different reasons (and both took a while to reach their peak).
I retract mine then :P
W3 is one of the greatest games ever made. Apart from graphics and maybe combat, cyberpunk was a huge step down from it in almost every way. A mile wide but an inch deep, and I enjoyed most of what I played of it. But it was not even in the same stratosphere as The Witcher 3
I’m way late to this party, but I absolutely love Cyberpunk, and loved it right away. I bounced off Witcher 3 more times than I can count, so…certainly to each his own sort of thing lol.
The moment to moment gameplay in CP is just amazing for me, it’s really hard for me to stop playing, as the “just one more police mission to boost my street cred” is really really strong. One of my favorite games of all time at this point, and I’m quite sure I’ll replay it at least 3 times just for different build ideas.
I also just got a new computer which is amazing, so this has been incredibly enjoyable in that regard as well. Being able to play a game like this with ray tracing on, and have it be like butter is heaven.
I agree that Cyberpunk isn’t as good as many other “greatest games of all time”. But I’ve done 3 full playthroughs of it. It’s got something special these other games do not. Maybe it’s the setting. Maybe it’s Keanu. Maybe it’s Maybelline.
I finally finished all the gigs, and man that is some lameness. It really shows how in some ways, even with all the updates, this game is just janky and unsatisfying. And don’t get me wrong. I love all the changes and updates they’ve done to the base game, but some of this stuff is just… Ugh.
When you finish all the gigs for a fixer, they send a text saying how awesome you are and how you deserve a reward and go to your stash to find it. It’s a custom weapon or vehicle. Great. That’s it. Like, how about a face-to-face goodbye meeting? They have the models. They certainly recorded a bunch of VO for the fixers to chatter at you before and after each gig. But nope. A text message is the best you get.
How are they even putting that weapon in your private stash? If they’re gonna lame out and text you the goodbye, just send the item through one of the countless drop-boxes in town. That would at least make sense with the world they’ve built.
Gah. So frustratingly close to being great.
I’m right there with you. W3 was too much story, too many cutscenes to get to the meat, and then the combat was unsatisfying. CP caught me immediately, my only big complaint is that the open world stuff is a little thin on throughlines and the power curve is a bit too quick to become godlike, but the city and the views are incredible.
Moment to moment exploration, movement, fighting–all that is great in Cyberpunk 2077. The main story is a matter of taste, but overall well executed IMO. Bigger side missions are often good. Gigs and filler missions are mostly bad. I’ve put over 433 hours into the game so yeah I do like it a lot, but at this point I’m done until new stuff.
Progression for instance is sort of wonky. The first time, it’s pretty cool. After that, though, you can easily max out level and street cred long before you max out the storyline missions, at which point all that’s really left is completionist stuff which is generally meh. In fact, the game sort of encourages you to max everything out before the point of no return, in a lot of ways (mostly around combat and skills).
I took to Cyberpunk instantly though; it took well over a year or more before I could finally make W3 click (but when it did I loved it too).
I certainly have issues with a lot of the game’s systems. It’s impossible to get most skills to lvl 20 unless you grind enemy spawn loops. With just natural gameplay, if you do every mission and stick to one weapon type, maybe you’ll hit level 18 with that. Just forget Athletics. The only way to level that is to drain your stamina meter. Every 5 times or so you get 75 XP, 90 if you slept. There are good skills in that tree too.
The only skill I got to 20 was crafting, and that’s because you can exploit crafting to get infinite money. Buy supplies, craft, sell for profit, skip time in game and repeat.
I also agree that many of the gig missions are filler. The NCPD ones are even worse. At least those are stop, murder everyone, get some cash and XP. They don’t take a lot of time unless you’re trying to 100% those.
The main story missions are where this game shines. They went above and beyond with those. The Johnny flashbacks are fantastic too. Seeing how the world changed, even if it’s just in small slices, was really cool. They created characters I actually care about and I felt like I was a part of their lives.
Or, as the case may be, didn’t change. A lot of it is about the tension between needing to resist and the futility of resistance.
I think the things that keeps it from earning that fourth A are simply a longer main mission story and having all the side missions have actual impact. I loved every second I was doing something, but ultimately they were unimportant other than stat pumping and item collecting. The main mission I felt was perfectly fine but needed to be at least 2x longer.
I suspect it was supposed to be longer, with full origin story integration and probably a lot more stuff with the city itself. As we now know though, mistakes were made…
Yeah, but didn’t it have some ridiculous production cost like 200 million? FFS, hire some writers.
The best quest/mission/whatever in the game involved a vending machine.
As is often the case, apparently it was a matter of mismanagement and not lack of resources. They seemed to have had plenty of labor, not enough direction or something.
There a known good way to skip the game launch/intro videos and get right to the main menu? My Google-fu fails me.