Cyberpunk 2077 Review Trapped by an Illusion

Welcome to Night City, a large futuristic city that not only contains technological advances, but is also a "nest" for many giant corporations. You will be faced with a city that looks beautiful on the surface, but shows obvious decay in various corners. Corruption, poverty and super high crime rates have become commonplace in technology which is starting to merge the concepts of humans and machines in the same space. You will act as a character named “V”. Apart from the three origin story options that you can choose, V's fate will revolve around the same main story. Your meeting with Jackie has now opened your eyes to the potential for gaining wealth by becoming a mercenary. All you need to do is accept jobs from the Fixers scattered throughout Night City, don't ask many questions, and complete the task perfectly. V and Jackie are slowly but surely starting to gain popularity. They continued to achieve more dangerous jobs with higher pay. The dream of becoming a “legend” in Night City is getting closer.

But one of the jobs they take ends up having consequences they never predicted. The task of retrieving and stealing a mysterious Relic from the Arasaka corporation actually ends with V having to integrate the object with his body in the name of work. While dying and shocked, this Relic turns out to contain the figure of Johnny Silverhand - a rocker from the Samurai band who grew up to become a radical and dreamed of destroying Arasaka. In a world where the technology to convert personality and soul into digital data is not yet commonplace, V meets a truly unusual condition. So, what will V's next adventure be like after he has to "live" with Johnny Silverhand?

Night City

If we have to talk about one of the best aspects that CD Projekt Red has successfully executed with Cyberpunk 2077, then their success in building and presenting such a charming Night City is one that deserves to be appreciated. We are of course not just talking about visual presentation, how majestic tall buildings are lined up on many corners with brightly lit advertisements that constantly demand you to consume more products or how it is surrounded by barren areas that also function as rubbish dumps. electronics that are born from human lifestyle alone. What we are talking about are the characters who live and live in Night City, which ends up making this city much more interesting than you might imagine. One of the best parts of Night City is the characters that live in it. The NPCs he carries don't look complex enough to have specific daily activity schedules, but they are enough to represent the lifestyle that this game wants to highlight. You will see a mix of lifestyles of modern humans who still find time to have fun in clubs, openly explore their sexual needs, and simply continue to broadcast conspiracy theories that, it seems, are still difficult to erase from the future. All of this is presented with flashing neon lights and various billboards containing products that, using real world reasoning, would be almost impossible to end up highlighting.

These character qualities shine even more when the focus is directed towards them in the various side missions that you can complete. Apart from the character design, especially for the fantastic female characters, CD Projekt Red has succeeded in making each of these characters interesting figures to follow, complete with unique conflicts and personalities. From small things like sexual preferences, these characters don't necessarily fall into the "gamer's wants and needs", but do have their own unique tendencies to the way they interact with you - V. Take for example Judy who is positioned as a lesbian in here. Judy doesn't just “change” and end up sleeping with you no matter how hard you try as the “male” V character, making this character feel alive and unique. The way they make friends by regularly sharing messages and photos via the in-game feature is also different from, for example, the way other characters like Claire or Panam do. Coupled with complete missions to explore their happy, dark and sad sides, each character feels complete. We are sure you must be curious about Keanu Reeves' acting as Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2077, who not only lent his digital appearance, but also his voice and motion capture process. Being such a big part of V's story as a character, we can be among those who love what Keanu has to offer here. Still using his unique acting with a dialogue intonation that is still relatively flat in most situations, at least he managed to capture the sense of "apathy" of Johnny Silverhand, who is described as a radical with a big grudge full of hatred for big corporations, especially Arasaka. Through Keanu's voice and acting, Johnny Silverhand looks like a cool and cold character at the same time. You can feel that he is fed up with the state of Night City.

Unfortunately, this presentation side also contains a weakness that is tied to the gameplay itself. Believe it or not, fashion. We are not experts to discuss this element in full and in detail, but it seems that you don't need special eyes to understand how different the quality of the fashion worn by V as the main character is and the variety of supporting characters you meet during the story. Almost all of the companion character fashions you encounter look beautiful, represent the cyberpunk theme well, and also provide quite clear information about their backgrounds. Meanwhile for V? With a fashion system that is tied to an RPG game-style equipment system, it will be difficult for you to find a mix and match that will make you look like a cool character. Most of the fashion available for V, especially hats, looks sad. The good news is, despite these design issues, Cyberpunk 2077's musical presentation thankfully lives up to expectations fantastically. Apart from several big OSTs involving famous artists, whose songs you can also enjoy in the game via cut-scenes or various available radio channels, the variety of OSTs prepared by Marcin Przybyłowicz and P.T. Adamczyk succeeded in building the atmosphere of Cyberpunk 2077 just right. Loud beats of music that at some points remind you of Mick Gordon's DOOM, with an injection of futuristic elements that make everything feel fierce, ready to make your open war action even more adrenaline-inducing. On the other hand, calmer music is also ready to accompany you when moments like this are needed.

Technical problem and Glitch

Let's talk about "small" things first. We encountered a situation where, for unclear reasons, our character refused to switch weapons from Gorilla Arms back to the Sub-Machine Gun that we had installed in the first slot. In the midst of a critical combat situation, not being able to draw a weapon without a clear reason is a recipe for death. We also encountered a situation where V, for no apparent reason, kept tripping and falling in the same location over and over again even though we didn't jump at all. It took about 3-4 minutes of waiting through several awkward animations to get through this phase whose trigger was unclear. In terms of world design? We fell in a water area where the stairs to climb back to civilization all forgot to include an extra step at the bottom so we could climb and climb. We also encountered an extra gap in the bridge when riding a motorbike, which if you were unlucky and accidentally hit it, you would be stuck without being able to move the motorbike or your character at all, where resetting was the only answer.

Then slowly but surely, as your game progresses, you will start to find bugs and glitches that start to mess up the game. You will find things that annoy the UI, such as Johnny Silverhand's dialogue subtitles which refuse to disappear from the main screen and continue to stay there, even though dialogue from other characters comes one after another. You will also encounter conditions where, for unknown reasons, the mission refuses to trigger. Characters who are supposed to initiate conversations or respond to dialogue to move the story forward decide to stay in the same place, doing nothing, regardless of how long you wait. In the worst situation, we had to reload the checkpoint at least 3 times when faced with the Netrunner character from Militech who should have triggered a conversation first. We never understood why he refused to trigger, we did the same thing on three different occasions, but for strange reasons - only the third repetition succeeded in pushing the story forward. Imagine if a similar situation occurred several times on different occasions. The process of guessing what triggers this bug is starting to become something that is no longer fun to laugh at.

So, what happened to the console version that we happened to try was not just a technical problem like a messy framerate. The complaints expressed are also not excessive, because almost no console gamer is "crazy" enough to want an experience equivalent to the PC version, which incidentally is always a platform that is always significantly stronger in terms of performance. You, for example, won't hear console gamers complaining when Red Dead Redemption 2 was released and how their gaming platform version wasn't as sharp and crazy as the PC version. What is happening here is a version from a technical perspective, which is difficult to "accept" as a final product. Trying the Playstation 4 version ourselves, we can understand the frustration that arises despite the promise of improvements via updates that were immediately thrown out by CD Projekt Red.

However, the part that in our eyes is most annoying is how story points in Cyberpunk 2077 can suddenly change your character's inventory and equipment at will without prior notification. At one point, you suddenly wake up naked and have to organize this inventory again from scratch. At another point, you get a new story-appropriate weapon that automatically changes your weapon allocation across the three main slots whether you want it or not before plunging straight into the action side of things. The biggest source of annoyance? At one point in the story, the game suddenly automatically changes V's body cyberware modifications without prior notice. The position of the Cyberware that has been replaced is the hand, which we embedded with the "Smartlink" feature to make all our smart weapons able to detect, aim and kill all enemies they encounter. Imagine our surprise when our 2 smart weapons - our Smart SMG and Smart Sniper Rifle suddenly no longer worked, refusing to detect the enemy in sight. We wanted to scream when we discovered that the source of this problem was not a bug, but CD Projekt Red's decision to change parts of Cyberware in the name of "story", even though you can't see it or contribute anything to the immersive sensation. We cannot understand what they are trying to achieve under these conditions.

More Action Than RPG

Your experience playing Cyberpunk 2077 can be said to be straightforward. As the story moves along, you will be presented with at least three types of missions - main missions, side missions, and “smaller” missions scattered in the form of icons on the map. Main missions will drive the main story and progress around the growth of V and Johnny Silverhand as characters, side missions usually focus on side and supporting characters - which can lead to a series of missions with a solid story, while “smaller” missions usually have a blue icon present simpler. This mission usually asks you to steal something, clear the area of ​​enemies, and look for evidence. There are also smaller missions with yellow icons that usually include more of the story, but aren't as in-depth as the character-based side missions we mentioned earlier. Each mission, like an RPG game, will certainly provide interesting rewards to pursue. Apart from the money you can allocate to buy various things, from weapons to vehicles, you will also get EXP for two different categories - Character level and Street Cred. Character levels act like RPG games in general, where each increase will give you extra attributes and perk points to allocate to various existing categories. Meanwhile, Street Cred is your popularity level in Night City, which will provide almost the same rewards, but will also open up more side missions as this number increases.

So like any RPG game should be, the chance of building your desired V gameplay style will depend heavily on the distribution of these various points. Attributes Points can be allocated to one of 5 main categories: Body, Intelligence, Reflexes, Cool, and Technical Ability. Allocation of points to these Attributes provides two benefits: the potential to use them to offer alternative solutions when faced with a particular problem and also increases the maximum number of Perk points that you can distribute within the sub-categories of each of these Attributes. Because each Attribute will open a smaller skill tree that will determine how skilled you are at mastering a particular set of abilities, from the effectiveness of melee weapons and rifles, hacking speed, to the ability to craft rarer weapons and equipment. Considering that the number of levels and Street Cred ends up being "limited", you inevitably have to prioritize where these points will flow. Cyberpunk 2077 also implements a weapon use system similar to what Bethesda offers in Skyrim, for example. Where the frequency with which you use a particular weapon category, will contribute to your returning mastery ability, is divided into several different levels. For every time you increase your level of mastery of weapons, stealth, hacking, and crafting, you will get perk points (for distribution to sub-category levels) or make that specific ability more powerful. Frequently using a handgun, for example, will increase your mastery, which has the potential to reduce the recoil that occurs and cause more deadly damage. This means that your playing style, especially when dealing with the action side, will continue to be facilitated regardless of what you choose.

There are several things that of course contribute to the impression of one thing. From the very beginning, for example, where you are asked to choose one of three origin stories for V: whether he is a Nomads, Street Kid, or a Corpo who will start his story in a different place and with supporting characters who meet you at the beginning. Along the way, you will indeed find conversation options that you can only take if you choose a certain origin. But slowly but surely you will realize that this option, at least for the main story and "big" side stories, doesn't produce much impact. The story will move the same between these three origin stories, with more ending variations determined by the choices you make at story points which will be available the same for all origin stories. You can actually find this impression in the first 30 minutes of the game, when the story point melts into the same position when you start meeting Jackie. Whatever your origin story, the story of Cyberpunk 2077 still follows the same plot. As a gamer who has enjoyed how solid western RPG games execute a category-based skill system which will usually influence not only your playing style or offer extra solutions to problems, but also influence your interactivity and knowledge of the world being played, what Cyberpunk 2077 has to offer it's a bit disappointing. Disappointing in the sense that it's either because the RPG concept is quite complicated or because our expectations at the start were too high. Comparing it with games like Deus Ex or Disco Elysium, for example, only emphasizes how lacking in design and implementation Cyberpunk 2077 is.

The same disappointment also surfaces when you explore the Cyberware system - which in this game, refers to the various body modifications that can be injected into V's body. Of all the body parts that you can modify, there are only 3 body parts that really affect your playing style: the eyes provides HUD information, hands for implementing the Smart Link needed for smart weapons, and feet that can add high jump or double jump capabilities. The rest? Only affects character buffs, a concept that has been implemented in previous inventory / equipment systems. Cyberware's lack of influence on what V can do during the exploration process, solving problems, or simply opening up conversation options for certain conflicts has become a new source of disappointment. In fact, in a world like Cyberpunk 2077, this body modification is supposed to be your new “identity”. But in the end, it was mostly dominated by mere equipment system-style buffs.

Once you start comparing it with a deeper RPG system in the style of Disco Elysium, the weaknesses of Cyberpunk 2077's RPG elements are even more obvious. In Disco Elysium, the attributes you focus on really influence your playing style, even for things as small as the character's access to information and knowledge about the world he has to face. Almost every character has a different level of interaction depending on how you shape your character there. In Cyberpunk 2077? Most of this comes down to your choice of Lifepath (origin Story) up front, which won't provide that significant of a playstyle alternative outside of the few missions and different side characters you might encounter. Regardless of whether you are a Corpo - Nomad - Streetkid, regardless of the type of Cyberware you attach to V, regardless of the various attributes you focus on for him, the story and progress you get will not differ significantly until you are given choices that will influence ending at the end.

Everything is made worse by the quality of the AI, especially the NPCs you encounter in Night City, which are unfortunately poor. With NPC quality like this, it's hard to get the taste of an immersive RPG game. In many old RPG games or even just traditional open-world action games, NPCs usually react strongly to the appearance or situation surrounding the character you use. There are plenty of games out there that are capable of concocting NPCs that will comment on what clothes you are wearing or not wearing, react to whether you are holding a weapon openly in a peaceful area or not, or even interact randomly as you move past them. NPCs in Cyberpunk 2077 come with just two functions – walking and ducking when they hear gunshots, all of which come with the same animation. On the other hand, the police NPCs who are ready to react when you commit a crime come with an irrational system. Regardless of the situation and location where it is triggered, you will find several police officers suddenly appearing near you, without any information about where they came from and how quickly they reacted. The AI ​​of the NPCs in Cyberpunk 2077 is at a level, worthy of a laugh.

One source of our complaints also comes from the myriad of food items you find along the way. These available foods act as buff enhancing items that are ready to make your V character stronger in several statuses or attributes. However, unlike the Concoction system in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which is essential to consume or consider as part of a strategy before fighting deadly monsters, food elements in Cyberpunk 2077 are slowly but surely turning into unused "inventory trash". Whether it's because the normal difficulty level can be overcome with standard weapons alone or because the buffs provided are not significant, but slowly but surely, you will see how these foods end up filling your pockets quickly. The good news? At least it doesn't weigh much, and therefore won't affect many of the items you carry later.

Corporate Illusions

It seems difficult to discuss and talk about Cyberpunk 2077 without discussing what CD Projekt Red has done over at least the last few years to maintain the existing hype. It's interesting to see that after the success they achieved with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, they managed to build a fan base that fiercely defended this Polish company despite various problems that clearly arose from neglect and not because of "accident". This is where the theme of Cyberpunk 2077 actually strengthens and comes to the fore, like life which turns out to be in line with the art that emerges. A theme where corporate illusions and the hypocritical nature of gamers come to the fore. The hypocrisy of gamers is felt strongly when talking about the case of Cyberpunk 2077 and the level of quality control they carried out before releasing this game on the market. There have been many defenses put forward, which would give the impression that CD Projekt Red could "escape responsibility" for a release situation full of bugs and glitches. This is certainly a very different situation when we talk about Bethesda's past releases of Fallout 76, for example.

When Fallout 76 was released to the market, where bugs and glitches became "food" that gamers who bought it in the first week of release had to face, harsh criticism emerged everywhere. All the gamers focused on how bad the quality of the releases back then was and how games like this shouldn't exist. No one talks about “gameplay potential” or how “This game will be perfect after the next few updates” like what happened with Cyberpunk 2077. There is a special treatment that is hard to explain when it comes to Cyberpunk 2077, leaving the impression that the developer is so perfect that they “ impossible to be wrong.” The defense about how "CD Projekt Red was forced by shareholders to release games that weren't ready" is also not something that can be accepted with open arms. Why? Because the evidence clearly points to the same conclusion - that CD Projekt Red understood from the start how suboptimal the release of the Playstation 4 and Xbox One versions was.

An even crazier defense comes from the narrative about how "Cyberpunk 2077 was actually developed only for the next-gen platform". First, this game was first introduced in 2013, seven years ago, when the development process for The Witcher 3 had not yet been completed. At that time, the Playstation 4 and Xbox One had just been released and there was no idea what the next-gen console would need to provide in terms of performance and features. Second? CD Projekt Red opened the pre-order process in mid-2018, which means they clearly sold this game for the current generation of consoles – Playstation 4 and Xbox One. In 2018, when the PO was opened, there were no rumors, discussions, or dev.kits for next-gen consoles available. It is impossible for them to develop a next-gen game without understanding the performance of the next-gen console itself.

Conclusion

Like the charm they succeeded in conveying in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Cyberpunk 2077 appears as an action RPG game that is strong on two fronts - story and character. Despite not having much of an impact on your character's origin story in the end, it still provides a future story full of giant corporate conflicts that is still interesting and arouses curiosity. However, it must be acknowledged that the best part of this game lies in the variety of characters you meet along the way, both from the main mission and the side stories that you can complete. Almost all of these characters are unique, full of personality, dark conflicts that are interesting to explore, and charming designs. Even for the factions you fight, it's interesting to see how the Voodoo Boys, for example, have a different design approach and philosophy from the Maelstroms. In conditions like these, Cyberpunk 2077 shines.

But unfortunately, Cyberpunk 2077 is not a perfect game. Apart from the various bugs and glitches that you find, the very poor performance of the current generation console version, and several situations that clearly require an immediate QOL update (especially the message system and Regina Jones' telephone frequency), it doesn't appear as RPG-like as we imagined. That the dreams and hopes of how V's origin story or the variety of Cyberware that you can install will significantly influence the story or the solution to the problems you face, end up being mere dreams. It must be admitted that the action flavor is much more obvious than the RPG elements that are used, making comparisons with games like Deus Ex or Disco Elysium actually make this deficiency even more of a concern. However, it must be admitted that Cyberpunk 2077 has an attraction that is hard to resist as long as you come to enjoy the story and characters it offers. Your enjoyment will be optimal if the main reason you come to try it is the world and story it contains, and not because of the RPG system it offers. However, with the various technical problems currently being raised, even in the PC version, we recommend that you wait until at least more updates are released to ensure a more perfect experience. While you wait, there is always a chance that it will drop at a lower, wallet-friendly price later.