Beaten On: 10.18.2023
Hours Played: 70 total, 40 playthrough
Difficulty: Hard
Rating: 8/10

This isn’t going to be an in depth review, but I did want to talk about my experience playing Cyberpunk again.

I played the game for 29 hours on release and got most of the way through act 2 and did probably half the mainline side quests. Mainline side quests feels weird to say… I digress. My full playthrough was right at 40 hours and was played about half on 2.0 and half on 2.01 and while the game definitely felt better with the changes to the RPG mechanics they made, and the cyberware changes, it still felt a bit incomplete and I think it probably always will.

Basically all spoilers ahead

As far as positive changes, like I mentioned, they redid the skill trees to make things seem more useful and balanced, which I think was a good change. They also removed the ability to reset your abilities at will (I think), which meant you couldn’t just brute force skill checks if you wanted. I overall think that was a positive change, but I hated it personally and towards the end of the game I modded in the ability to reset my ability points. I also found melee to be a bit more viable my second time around and I think that’s at least partially because of the skill tree changes. But there’s still this undertone of “unfinished”, in my opinion. Take net running for example, at the end of the game I just modded in max skill and attribute points and had tier 5 equipment but I only had enough RAM to do one lethal quick hack basically ever. I don’t think the point of it is to be able to kill everyone with quick hacks, but it felt bad to only kill one person and then wait for like 4 minutes to kill someone else if I wanted, and that was at more or less max-level.

Where the game felt really incomplete was in the ending and some of the storylines. One of the side quests that felt bad was the quest with Gary, the conspiracy theorist near Vik’s clinic. At the end of his questline you’re sent to a secret meeting with I think Arasaka and Maelstrom to discover a biochip exchange (I’m going off memory so I’m sure I’m getting details wrong). After you get the chip you go back to Gary’s alley to find him gone and a woman in his place, this woman tells you that Gary was taken away in a black van and that she’s trying to raise money to get a statue in his honor. I checked multiple times and there was never a statue, but the quest’s ending just felt meh and unfinished. Like, I didn’t need a happy ending, but there was zero closure at all. At least kill him and leave his body in the alley or something, or ideally let me mount a rescue mission. Or hell, have some kind of easter egg or mention of him when you attack Arasaka later in the game.

An example I felt was well handled is Scorpion’s death. He died in a somewhat emotional/climactic way and they closed the thread nicely with a short quest later on with Mitch. They also mention him throughout the Aldecaldos questline. I know Gary was a less significant character, but it would have been nice if he got at least some of the same treatment.

Looking towards the ending of the game, I ended up choosing the Panam ending and I sent V back to his body. I read through the other endings (minus the DLC ending because I plan to get that later) and they all kinda suck. Like, I don’t need the endings to be happy, but I feel like all of them diminish the impact you would have had on Night City. The destruction of Mikoshi is barely mentioned in the epilogue, the death of Hanako was glossed over, and things that would probably be a big deal in a more realistic setting, like winning the street races as a rookie are never mentioned after they happen. I think overall I would have preferred less, but more polished content.

But I’m still giving the game an 8/10, why? Well, despite the game feeling somewhat unfinished, it’s still extremely fun; out of the almost 30 games I’ve played this year, Cyberpunk is probably in the top 5, definitely in the top 10, and that’s all down to the gameplay and the characters. While I wish Jackie had more screen time, and honestly just a different ending for him, he was a compelling character that you get attached to right away. And I felt the same about most of the side characters, Judy, River, Panam, and even smaller characters without full questlines, like Vik, Claire, Garry, and Coach Fred (even if I didn’t like him by the end). Plus, the gameplay is just plain fun and has so many options. Do you want to literally dash into combat and stab people with Mantis Blades, or punch them to death with gorilla arms? Go for it! Stealth kill everyone with a pistol? Yessir! I was going to keep that bit going but it felt stale, but you get the idea.

I hope, if/when Cyberpunk 2077 2 comes out that it’s a little smaller, more polished, and the devs don’t have to endure insane crunch. I thoroughly enjoyed my ~70 hours with Cyberpunk and while I think it could have easily been a better game had it had a longer and more pointed development, what we got with 2.0 is still fantastic. Not something I’d consider a must-play, or a staple of it’s genre like Witcher 3 was before it, but still totally worth my time.