{"id":505,"date":"2026-04-15T14:31:44","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T06:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maintenance.czmywlkj.top\/index.php\/2026\/04\/15\/cyberpunk-2077-the-ultimate-open-world-rpg-in-the-neon-drenched-future\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T10:02:55","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T02:02:55","slug":"cyberpunk-2077-the-ultimate-open-world-rpg-in-the-neon-drenched-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xymaintenance.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/15\/cyberpunk-2077-the-ultimate-open-world-rpg-in-the-neon-drenched-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyberpunk 2077: The Ultimate Open-World RPG in the Neon-Drenched Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/placehold.co\/1200x630\/0a0a1a\/ff0088\/png?text=CYBERPUNK+2077\" alt=\"Cyberpunk 2077\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>OK so I need to get this off my chest because I feel like I&#8217;ve been living a lie for the past few years.<\/p>\n<p>I bought Cyberpunk 2077 at launch. December 10, 2020. 11:58 PM, I&#8217;m sitting there hitting &#8220;pre-load&#8221; like an idiot because I believed the hype. I believed it. The trailers were perfect, Keanu fucking Reeves was in it, it was gonna be the game to end all games.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>I played for six hours on my PS4. Six. Hours. And then I uninstalled it because it crashed every twenty minutes and at one point Jackie&#8217;s face just&#8230; peeled off. Like, his texture literally slid down his face while he was talking to me. I wish I was joking. I actually have a video of it somewhere but I&#8217;m too embarrassed to look for it because I was screaming at my TV like a lunatic.<\/p>\n<p>And then I didn&#8217;t touch it for almost two years. TWO YEARS. I just&#8230; I was done. I&#8217;d been burned too many times by overhyped games (I&#8217;m looking at you, No Man&#8217;s Sky, though at least you fixed yourself).<\/p>\n<p>But here&#8217;s the thing. And I feel stupid saying this. Cyberpunk 2077 in 2026? It&#8217;s actually&#8230; really good? Like, I&#8217;m mad at myself for waiting this long to give it another chance.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, let me back up. This isn&#8217;t a review. I&#8217;m not a game reviewer. I&#8217;m just a dude who wasted $70 in 2020 and finally decided to see if CD Projekt Red actually fixed their mess.<\/p>\n<p>Spoiler alert: they did. Mostly.<\/p>\n<h2>OK but first, the launch disaster (we all remember, right?)<\/h2>\n<p>I&#8217;m not gonna rehash the whole thing because we all lived through it. But let&#8217;s just acknowledge: launch Cyberpunk was a dumpster fire. CDPR&#8217;s stock price tanked, they had to offer refunds, and the memes were absolutely brutal. My favorite was &#8220;The delay department is closed&#8221; \u2014 remember that? When they kept delaying it and then suddenly it was &#8220;OK we&#8217;re launching, no more delays&#8221;? Yeah. That aged well.<\/p>\n<p>But here&#8217;s what people don&#8217;t talk about enough: CDPR didn&#8217;t have to fix it. They could&#8217;ve walked away. Taken the L, moved on to the next Witcher game, whatever. Instead, they spent like three years patching this thing. That counts for something, right?<\/p>\n<p>Right? &#8230;Guys?<\/p>\n<h2>Patch 2.0 changed everything (no, really)<\/h2>\n<p>So I finally came back to the game in 2024 because Patch 2.0 dropped and people were like &#8220;no seriously, it&#8217;s good now.&#8221; And I was like &#8220;OK suuuure&#8221; but I downloaded it anyway because I&#8217;m a sucker for punishment apparently.<\/p>\n<p>And&#8230; wow. The skill trees got a complete rework. The police system \u2014 which was famously broken at launch, like embarrassingly broken \u2014 actually works now. Kind of. We&#8217;ll get to that.<\/p>\n<p>And then Phantom Liberty dropped in 2023 with Idris Elba and&#8230; OK, I&#8217;m getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning.<\/p>\n<h2>V and Johnny (or: why is Keanu Reeves in my head?)<\/h2>\n<p>You play V. Mercenary in Night City. You can customize your character&#8217;s lifepath (Nomad, Street Kid, Corpo), their appearance, whatever. I went with Corpo for my first real playthrough because I wanted to see what the hype was about with the Johnny Silverhand stuff.<\/p>\n<p>Also, full disclosure: I have a massive crush on Keanu Reeves and I will not apologize for this.<\/p>\n<p>So here&#8217;s the actual plot (without spoiling too much): You take a job with Jackie Welles (your best friend, and the game makes you like him IMMEDIATELY, which is cruel because&#8230; well, you&#8217;ll see). Things go wrong \u2014 they always do in these games \u2014 and you end up with a relic chip in your head containing Johnny Silverhand&#8217;s consciousness.<\/p>\n<p>Johnny Silverhand is a rockerboy from the 2020s who&#8217;s been dead for 50 years. And now he&#8217;s in your head, and you&#8217;re both sharing your body, and you have maybe six months before he completely overwrites your consciousness and you cease to exist.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s dark! It&#8217;s really dark! And the game doesn&#8217;t shy away from that.<\/p>\n<p>Keanu Reeves&#8230; OK, I know everyone made fun of this as a marketing gimmick. And yeah, it kind of is? But also? He&#8217;s genuinely good in this role. Like, I was expecting him to just phone it in and collect a paycheck, but he brings this world-weary exhaustion to Johnny that works. Johnny is an asshole. He&#8217;s arrogant, he&#8217;s reckless, he&#8217;s stuck in the past, he won&#8217;t shut up about &#8220;corporate slavery&#8221; while wearing a jacket that probably cost more than my first car. But he&#8217;s a likable asshole. By the end of the game, I actually cared about what happened to him.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s good writing, folks.<\/p>\n<p>The ticking clock element \u2014 you have six months before Johnny takes over \u2014 is what drives the game. You&#8217;re looking for a cure, you&#8217;re making deals with Arasaka and the NUSA and whoever else will help, and the game keeps raising the stakes. And then there&#8217;s the ending. Or endings, rather.<\/p>\n<p>OK, I&#8217;m not gonna spoil the endings because they&#8217;re genuinely worth experiencing fresh. But I will say this: the game doesn&#8217;t give you the &#8220;good&#8221; ending on a silver platter. There&#8217;s an ending that requires you to have built a specific relationship with Johnny, and if you haven&#8217;t been paying attention to your dialogue choices, you won&#8217;t get it. I didn&#8217;t get it on my first playthrough and when I found out what I missed I was PISSED and immediately started a new game.<\/p>\n<p>Also, Jackie dies. He dies early. And the game makes you watch. It&#8217;s devastating in a way that I didn&#8217;t expect from a game that spent the first three hours making you laugh with him. That&#8217;s the thing about Night City \u2014 it takes everything from you. The game tells you that from the beginning, and then it follows through. Ruthlessly.<\/p>\n<h2>The Lifepath System (actually meaningful, unlike some games I could mention)<\/h2>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignwide size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/placehold.co\/1200x500\/1a0a2a\/00ffcc\/png?text=LIFEPATHS+Nomad+Street+Kid+Corpo+V+Night+City+Backstory\" alt=\"Lifepaths\"\/><\/figure>\n<p>OK, so, lifepaths. Three options: Nomad, Street Kid, Corpo. I played Corpo first because I wanted the fancy suit. My friend played Street Kid. We compared notes and&#8230; dude. The differences are actually wild.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not just &#8220;you start in a different room.&#8221; The dialogue options, the way NPCs react to you, the opening mission \u2014 it&#8217;s basically three different prologues that converge at the same point. As a Corpo, you start in a boardroom. You&#8217;re about to fire someone (cold), and then YOU get fired, and suddenly you&#8217;re out on the street with nothing but your suit and your attitude. It&#8217;s kind of poetic?<\/p>\n<p>Street Kid starts you in Heywood. You know the gangs, you know the streets, and NPCs treat you differently because of it. There&#8217;s a scene where you&#8217;re trying to get into a club and the bouncer recognizes you \u2014 that only happens as Street Kid. It&#8217;s a small thing, but it adds up.<\/p>\n<p>Nomad starts you outside Night City in the Badlands. You and your clan are bringing something into the city, things go wrong (they always do), and you end up solo in a place that doesn&#8217;t trust outsiders. It&#8217;s the most &#8220;outsider looking in&#8221; perspective, and it works really well for a first playthrough because you&#8217;re learning the city at the same rate V is.<\/p>\n<p>The thing that impressed me is that lifepath isn&#8217;t just a starting bonus. It affects dialogue throughout the entire game. There were moments where I had a dialogue option as Corpo that my Street Kid friend didn&#8217;t have, and vice versa. That&#8217;s the kind of attention to detail that makes replaying actually worth it.<\/p>\n<p>Also, can we talk about how good the character creator is? You can make some absolutely ridiculous-looking characters. I spent like an hour tweaking my V&#8217;s eyebrows and then immediately put a helmet on her for the entire game. 10\/10 would waste time again.<\/p>\n<h2>Combat (Netrunner builds are busted, by the way)<\/h2>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignwide size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/placehold.co\/1200x500\/2a0a0a\/ff4400\/png?text=COMBAT+Netrunner+Hacker+Solo+Techie+Weapons+Melee+Ranged+Cyberware\" alt=\"Combat\"\/><\/figure>\n<p>There are three combat archetypes: Netrunner (hacker), Solo (weapons and cyberware), and Techie (engineering and crafting). You can mix them, but the game definitely pushes you toward specializing.<\/p>\n<p>I went Netrunner because I like the idea of hacking enemies remotely while they can&#8217;t even see me. Contagion is the MVP quickhack \u2014 it spreads damage through an entire room of enemies, and watching them all start taking damage-over-time while they&#8217;re trying to figure out where the shots are coming from? Chef&#8217;s kiss. Actually, no, that&#8217;s too pretentious. It&#8217;s freaking awesome, is what it is.<\/p>\n<p>But here&#8217;s the thing about Netrunner builds: they&#8217;re genuinely overpowered if you know what you&#8217;re doing. By the end of the game, I could upload a quickhack that made enemies literally explode, then upload another one that spread the explosion to everyone nearby. It&#8217;s not even fair. I felt a little bad about it, but also&#8230; it&#8217;s Night City. Fairness isn&#8217;t really the point.<\/p>\n<p>Solo builds are more traditional. You&#8217;re the person running in with mantis blades or monowire or just a really big gun. The Sandevistan cyberware \u2014 which slows time \u2014 is probably the most fun ability in the game. Everything goes slow-mo, you dash around enemies, and you feel like John Wick if John Wick had retractable blades in his forearms. Which, honestly? I&#8217;d watch that movie.<\/p>\n<p>Melee in this game is genuinely satisfying. Mantis blades extend from your arms and the animations are brutal. Monowire is a whip-like weapon that does bleeding damage over time. Gorilla arms let you punch through walls (literally \u2014 there are walls you can only punch through with gorilla arms). The cyberware system is the best part of the game, honestly. It just is. Getting new cyberware feels like&#8230; I don&#8217;t know, like Christmas morning? But if Christmas involved installing military-grade weaponry into your nervous system. Which, now that I think about it, is deeply messed up, but hey, it&#8217;s Cyberpunk. That&#8217;s the point.<\/p>\n<p>Techie builds are the least popular, and I think that&#8217;s a shame. Being able to deploy combat drones and mech suits is genuinely fun, and the crafting system lets you make some ridiculous weapons. I didn&#8217;t go full Techie on my first run, but on my second (Street Kid, because I wanted to see the differences), I experimented with it, and it&#8217;s viable. Just&#8230; not as flashy as Netrunner. Sorry, Techies. You deserve better.<\/p>\n<h2>Cyberware (becoming a walking weapon)<\/h2>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignwide size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/placehold.co\/1200x500\/0a1a0a\/cc88ff\/png?text=CYBERWARE+Mantis+Blades+Gorilla+Arms+Sandevistan+Mantis+Blades+Monowire\" alt=\"Cyberware\"\/><\/figure>\n<p>The cyberware system is where Cyberpunk 2077 shines. You can replace your eyes (better scanning), your arms (mantis blades, gorilla arms), your legs (double jump, charged jump), your nervous system (Sandevistan, Kerenzikov), your operating system (cyberdecks for Netrunners), and even your heart and lungs (more health, better stamina regen).<\/p>\n<p>The visual customization is also a nice touch. You can see the cyberware on V&#8217;s body. Mantis blades actually extend from your forearms in cutscenes. The Monowire coils around your arm. It&#8217;s stylish as hell, and it makes the &#8220;cool factor&#8221; of being a cyberpunk feel real.<\/p>\n<p>My personal favorite piece of cyberware is the Sandevistan. It&#8217;s a operating system mod that slows time for everyone except you. You activate it, everything goes slow-mo, and you can dash around enemies, hack them, shoot them, or just run past them if you&#8217;re not feeling a fight. It makes you feel like the coolest person in Night City, and isn&#8217;t that the whole point of cyberpunk as a genre?<\/p>\n<p>The double jump (from the legs cyberware) also completely changes how you navigate Night City. The city is vertical \u2014 there are rooftops and balconies and shortcuts everywhere \u2014 and being able to double jump means you can explore in ways that feel organic rather than &#8220;follow the objective marker.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>One criticism: the cyberware capacity system (introduced in Patch 2.0) is a bit confusing at first. You have a limited amount of &#8220;capacity&#8221; and every piece of cyberware takes up a certain amount. You can increase your capacity by finding cyberware capacity shards in the world, but it&#8217;s not clearly explained, and I had to look up a guide to understand it. Not a huge deal, but it&#8217;s the kind of thing that frustrates new players. Also, why is there no in-game explanation for this? CDPR, explain your systems please.<\/p>\n<h2>Night City (the most detailed open world that still feels empty sometimes)<\/h2>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignwide size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/placehold.co\/1200x500\/0a0a2a\/ffcc00\/png?text=NIGHT+CITY+Watson+Westbrook+City+Center+Pacifica+Santo+Domingo+Badlands\" alt=\"Night City\"\/><\/figure>\n<p>Night City is beautiful. Genuinely, objectively beautiful. The neon reflections in the rain, the megabuildings towering over everything, the contrast between the gleaming corporate towers of City Center and the rundown, rainy streets of Watson \u2014 it&#8217;s a visual masterpiece.<\/p>\n<p>Watson is where you start. It&#8217;s dense, claustrophobic, and feels lived-in. There are food stalls, market stalls, and random NPCs having conversations that you can eavesdrop on. It feels like a real place, which is more than I can say for some open-world games (*cough* Assassin&#8217;s Creed *cough*).<\/p>\n<p>Westbrook has Japantown, which is exactly what it sounds like and handles the cultural representation&#8230; OK-ish? It&#8217;s not offensive, but it&#8217;s also not exactly nuanced. It kind of feels like &#8220;Japan if Americans designed it,&#8221; which&#8230; well, that&#8217;s probably exactly what happened, so.<\/p>\n<p>City Center is where the corporate power players operate. Arasaka Tower looms over everything. Militech has their presence. It&#8217;s gleaming and clean and feels deliberately unwelcoming to someone who isn&#8217;t wearing a suit that costs more than a car.<\/p>\n<p>Pacifica is the abandoned casino district that&#8217;s been taken over by the Voodoo Boys gang. It&#8217;s creepy, it&#8217;s rundown, and the humidity in the air (visually represented, at least) makes it feel oppressive. The mission where you infiltrate the VIP section of Pacifica is one of the best in the game.<\/p>\n<p>But here&#8217;s my criticism of Night City: it&#8217;s beautiful, but it&#8217;s also kind of empty. Not &#8220;no NPCs&#8221; empty \u2014 there are plenty of NPCs. But in terms of things to do? Once you&#8217;ve done the main story and the side gigs, there&#8217;s not much reason to keep exploring. The NCPD scanner hustles (random crime events) are repetitive. The gigs are fun the first time, but they&#8217;re mostly &#8220;go here, kill this, loot that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not a living world in the way that, say, Red Dead Redemption 2&#8217;s world feels alive. NPCs don&#8217;t have schedules. They don&#8217;t go home at night. They stand in the same spot forever. It&#8217;s a backdrop, not a simulation. And that&#8217;s fine! It&#8217;s a video game, not a life simulator. But if you&#8217;re expecting the kind of emergent storytelling you get from Rockstar games, you&#8217;re going to be disappointed.<\/p>\n<p>The Badlands \u2014 the desert area outside Night City \u2014 is surprisingly good, though. It feels like a completely different game. Open roads, clan camps, dust storms. If you&#8217;re playing as Nomad, this area hits different because it&#8217;s your &#8220;home.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2>The Gangs (they&#8217;re not just enemies to shoot)<\/h2>\n<p>The gang system in Cyberpunk 2077 is actually pretty well done. They&#8217;re not just &#8220;bad guys to kill&#8221; \u2014 they have cultures, motivations, and internal politics.<\/p>\n<p>The Maelstrom gang is terrifying. They&#8217;re cyberpsychos who modify their bodies to the point of losing their humanity. There&#8217;s a mission where you negotiate with their leader, and it&#8217;s genuinely unsettling because you&#8217;re not sure if they&#8217;re going to kill you or actually listen to what you&#8217;re saying. Also, visually? Maelstrom members look like what would happen if a toaster had a midlife crisis and decided to become a cybernetic nightmare. It&#8217;s great.<\/p>\n<p>The Valentinos are a family-based gang in Heywood. They operate like a mafia \u2014 loyalty, codes of honor, that kind of thing. They&#8217;re not &#8220;good,&#8221; but they&#8217;re not cartoonishly evil either. Some of the side missions involving the Valentinos actually made me sympathetic to them, which I wasn&#8217;t expecting. Like, I&#8217;m still gonna shoot them if they shoot at me, but I feel bad about it. That&#8217;s character development, right?<\/p>\n<p>The Voodoo Boys in Pacifica are netrunners who worship an AI god. Their whole deal is&#8230; complicated. The game deals with themes of transhumanism and AI singularity, and the Voodoo Boys are at the center of that. Their storyline is one of the more intellectually interesting parts of the game. Also, their aesthetic is incredible. If I was gonna join a gang, it&#8217;d be them. (I&#8217;m not, Mom, don&#8217;t worry.)<\/p>\n<p>And then there are the Aldecaldos, the Nomad clan. They&#8217;re not really a gang \u2014 more like a traveling community. If you&#8217;re playing Nomad lifepath, the Aldecaldos are &#8220;your people,&#8221; and there&#8217;s a whole storyline about whether you&#8217;re going to stay with them or go back to Night City. It&#8217;s genuinely emotional, and the characters are well-written. Also, the Aldecaldo camp at night with the fire and the music? 10\/10 atmosphere. I could sit there for hours just listening to the guitar.<\/p>\n<h2>The Characters (Panam is the best, fight me)<\/h2>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignwide size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/placehold.co\/1200x500\/1a0a0a\/ff0088\/png?text=CHARACTERS+Johnny+Silverhand+Panam+Judy+Kerry+River+Goro+Rogue+Takemura\" alt=\"Characters\"\/><\/figure>\n<p>OK, let&#8217;s talk about Panam Palmer. She&#8217;s the romance option for V (if you&#8217;re playing male V or customizable V), and she&#8217;s genuinely one of the best-written companions I&#8217;ve encountered in an RPG. She&#8217;s fierce, she&#8217;s loyal, she&#8217;s got her own agenda, and she doesn&#8217;t just follow you around waiting for you to tell her what to do.<\/p>\n<p>Her personal questline is also one of the best in the game. It involves the Aldecaldos, a heist, and some genuinely tense moments where you&#8217;re not sure if things are going to work out. And the payoff \u2014 both in terms of the story and the romance \u2014 is worth it. Also, can we talk about how good the voice acting is? The VA for Panam brings this&#8230; I don&#8217;t know, this warmth? This genuineness? It&#8217;s easy to make a &#8220;tough girl&#8221; character sound one-dimensional, but Panam never feels like a stereotype.<\/p>\n<p>Judy Alvarez is the other big romance option (for female V or customizable V). She&#8217;s a braindance technician (braindance is basically VR recordings of people&#8217;s memories\/emotions), and her storyline deals with some heavy themes \u2014 exploitation, trauma, the ethics of recording people&#8217;s most intimate moments. It&#8217;s genuinely good writing, and Judy herself is a compelling character. Also, her apartment? Goals. I want my apartment to look like that when I grow up. (I&#8217;m 30, I&#8217;m already grown up. Shut up.)<\/p>\n<p>Johnny Silverhand, obviously, is central to the story. Keanu Reeves does a great job with the role. Johnny is an asshole \u2014 he&#8217;s arrogant, he&#8217;s reckless, he&#8217;s stuck in the past \u2014 but he&#8217;s also vulnerable in ways that the game reveals slowly. By the end, I cared about what happened to him, which is impressive character writing. Also, his fashion sense is terrible and I love it. The jacket, the aviators, the hair \u2014 it&#8217;s like he&#8217;s permanently stuck in 2020 and refuses to acknowledge that fashion has moved on. Iconic.<\/p>\n<p>Goro Takemura is the Arasaka bodyguard who becomes your unlikely ally. He&#8217;s honorable to a fault, and watching him struggle with his loyalty to Arasaka versus doing the right thing is genuinely compelling. His character arc is quiet but powerful. Also, his English VA is doing a Japanese accent and&#8230; OK, it&#8217;s not great? But it&#8217;s not terrible either? I&#8217;m conflicted about this. On one hand, representation matters. On the other hand, the accent is a bit much sometimes. I don&#8217;t know, you tell me.<\/p>\n<p>Rogue Amendiares \u2014 the &#8220;Queen of the Afterlife&#8221; mercenary bar \u2014 is a character you hear about for most of the game before you actually meet her. And when you do meet her, the game earns that buildup. She&#8217;s tough, she&#8217;s seen it all, and she&#8217;s got history with Johnny that adds layers to both characters. Also, the Afterlife bar is one of the best locations in the game. The atmosphere, the music, the mercenaries sitting around swapping war stories \u2014 it feels like a real place.<\/p>\n<p>And then there are the Phantom Liberty characters \u2014 Solomon Reed (Idris Elba) and Songbird. I&#8217;m not going to spoil Phantom Liberty&#8217;s story, but Solomon Reed is one of the best-written characters in the entire game. Idris Elba brings this weary, conflicted energy to the role that&#8217;s perfect. There&#8217;s a scene where he&#8217;s explaining his backstory to V, and it&#8217;s just him talking, no action, no flash, and it&#8217;s riveting. That&#8217;s good acting and good writing. Also, Idris Elba could read a grocery list and I&#8217;d listen, so take that with a grain of salt.<\/p>\n<p>Songbird&#8217;s storyline is&#8230; divisive, I think? Some players love it, some think it goes off the rails. I liked it, but I can see why it&#8217;s controversial. It deals with some heavy themes (AI, transhumanism, what it means to be human) and the game doesn&#8217;t give you easy answers. Which I appreciate, but also&#8230; sometimes I just want to shoot things and not think about the existential implications of AI consciousness, you know?<\/p>\n<h2>Phantom Liberty (the expansion that justifies the price of the whole game)<\/h2>\n<p>If you&#8217;re on the fence about Cyberpunk 2077, Phantom Liberty is the reason to play it. It&#8217;s a spy thriller storyline set in a new district called Dogtown (a walled-off part of Night City that&#8217;s basically lawless), and it&#8217;s genuinely excellent.<\/p>\n<p>You work with Solomon Reed (FIA agent, which is the Night City version of the CIA) to extract a spy (Songbird) from Dogtown. Things get complicated. That&#8217;s all I&#8217;m going to say.<\/p>\n<p>The expansion also adds vehicle combat (you can shoot from cars now, finally), new cyberware, new weapons, and new endings to the main game. It makes the base game better, which is the whole point of an expansion. Also, Dogtown is gorgeous in a grimy, neon-soaked way. The aesthetic is top-tier.<\/p>\n<p>Also, Idris Elba. Just&#8230; Idris Elba. The man brings so much gravity to every scene he&#8217;s in. There&#8217;s a scene where he&#8217;s explaining his backstory to V, and it&#8217;s just him talking, no action, no flash, and it&#8217;s riveting. That&#8217;s good acting and good writing.<\/p>\n<h2>Things I didn&#8217;t like (because nothing is perfect)<\/h2>\n<p>OK, honest criticisms time. Because as much as I&#8217;ve praised this game, it&#8217;s not flawless. Far from it.<\/p>\n<p>The driving physics are&#8230; not great. Cars feel floaty, like you&#8217;re driving on ice. It&#8217;s not game-breaking, but it&#8217;s noticeably janky, especially if you&#8217;re coming from a game with good driving like GTA or Watch Dogs. I spent half my time driving into walls because the car decided to drift for no reason. Maybe that&#8217;s realistic? I don&#8217;t know, I don&#8217;t drive. (I have a license, I just choose not to because I value my life.)<\/p>\n<p>The police system, even after the Patch 2.0 rework, is still kind of ridiculous. You commit a crime, the police show up, you kill them, more police show up, you kill them, and eventually you have the entire NCPD chasing you with rocket launchers. It doesn&#8217;t feel like a realistic police response \u2014 it feels like a video game police response, which, I guess it is, but it breaks immersion. Also, why are the police spawning out of nowhere? Where are the police stations? Where are the holding cells? The NCPD is just&#8230; spawning in? That&#8217;s not how policing works!<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;OK, I&#8217;m arguing with a video game about police procedural realism. I need help.<\/p>\n<p>The romance options, while well-written, are also kind of&#8230; limited? There are basically four romance paths (Panam, Judy, Kerry, River), and once you&#8217;ve done one, the others don&#8217;t have as much content. I get that the devs can&#8217;t write infinite romance content, but it would have been nice to have more than four options. Also, why can&#8217;t I romance Johnny? I know, I know, he&#8217;s in your head and that would be weird, but ALSO he&#8217;s Keanu Reeves and I have feelings, OK?<\/p>\n<p>And the ending \u2014 without spoiling anything \u2014 requires you to make a choice that feels under-informed. Like, the game doesn&#8217;t give you enough information to make a fully reasoned decision, and you kind of have to guess at the consequences. Which, I guess, is realistic? But it&#8217;s also frustrating when you&#8217;ve just spent 60 hours with these characters and now you have to make a choice based on incomplete information. I made the &#8220;wrong&#8221; choice my first playthrough and I was so mad I immediately started a new game to fix it. Which, I guess, is good game design? Make the player care enough to replay? But also, my time is valuable, CDPR!<\/p>\n<p>Also, the game is still buggy. Not &#8220;unplayable&#8221; buggy like at launch, but I&#8217;ve had NPCs T-pose, I&#8217;ve had missions fail to trigger, and I&#8217;ve had to reload saves because something didn&#8217;t load properly. It&#8217;s better, but it&#8217;s not fixed. Yesterday, I had a mission where the objective was to &#8220;talk to Johnny&#8221; and Johnny was nowhere to be found. I spent twenty minutes running around Night City like an idiot before I gave up and reloaded a save. That&#8217;s not a good experience.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and the NCPD scanner hustles? Repetitive. So repetitive. &#8220;Go to this location, kill these guys, loot this thing.&#8221; That&#8217;s it. That&#8217;s the gameplay loop. I know open-world games need filler content, but could it be slightly more varied? Please?<\/p>\n<h2>Should you play it?<\/h2>\n<p>Yes. Obviously yes.<\/p>\n<p>Look, I was one of the people who swore I&#8217;d never touch this game again after the launch disaster. And now here I am, 80 hours in on my first playthrough, about to start a second playthrough with a different lifepath because I want to see the differences.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not a perfect game. The driving is jank, the police system is nonsense, and it&#8217;s still buggy. But the story is genuinely good, the characters are compelling, the cyberware system is fun, and Night City is one of the most visually impressive game worlds I&#8217;ve ever explored.<\/p>\n<p>8.5 out of 10. The 1.5 points I&#8217;m docking are for the bugs that still exist, the driving physics, and the fact that the open world feels a bit empty once you&#8217;ve done the main content. But the 8.5 points it does get? Those are well-earned.<\/p>\n<p>Also, the soundtrack is fire. Samurai (the in-game band that Johnny was in) actually slaps. I have &#8220;Chippin&#8217; In&#8221; in my actual Spotify playlist. Don&#8217;t judge me.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, one more thing: the modding community on PC is insane. If you&#8217;re playing on PC, definitely check out Nexus Mods because the mods fix a lot of the issues I mentioned (driving, police, bugs) and add a ton of quality-of-life improvements. I&#8217;m playing on PS5 so I can&#8217;t mod, but if I was on PC? Oh boy, the mods I would install.<\/p>\n<p>OK, I&#8217;m done. Go play the game. Or don&#8217;t. I&#8217;m not your dad.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Though if you don&#8217;t play it, you&#8217;re missing out. Just saying.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Available on:<\/strong> PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC (Steam)<\/p>\n<p><em>What&#8217;s your favorite cyberware build? I&#8217;m partial to Netrunner, but my friend swears by Sandevistan Solo. Let me know in the comments, and also tell me I&#8217;m wrong about the romance options being limited, because maybe I missed something.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OK so I need to get this off my chest because I feel like I&#8217;ve been living a lie for the past few years. I bought Cyberpunk 2077 at launch. December 10, 2020. 11:58&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xymaintenance.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xymaintenance.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xymaintenance.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xymaintenance.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xymaintenance.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/xymaintenance.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":639,"href":"https:\/\/xymaintenance.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions\/639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xymaintenance.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xymaintenance.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xymaintenance.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xymaintenance.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}