Overall Review: 9/10 (Post update 2.0)

Gameplay: 8.5/10

Combat is incredibly fun, especially since there is no wrong way to play the game. Often games will have builds, perks and stats that are just objectively better than others, this game however is incredibly balanced and allows you to hand pick and choose your own playstyle without having to spend hours upon hours putting it together like most other RPGs or skill tree dependent games.

Want to run around as an invincible gorilla armed cyberpsycho throwing people at each other? You can do that. You wanna hack people and make them stick some iron in their mouth and pull the trigger without even getting into comabt? You can do that. And that's just TWO of the dozens of playstyles this game offers.

Unfortunately while it is incredibly fun to do all those things the only thing that falls flat is the depth to what you can do in combat.

You CAN have insanely broken hacking builds... But there are like 10 total hacks in the game you can do, the rest is either buffing cooldowns or spreading one hack to other enemies. Similarly brute builds ARE fun to either get in the enemy's face and either fist of the north star them into a red mist or blast them with a shotgun... But there aren't many other combat abilities that add more attack options other than either shooting them with gun or beating them to death.

Best example I can come up with for what would make combat a lot more interesting and engaging would be similar to what the Borderlands series does which is add more unique abilities available on the skill tree. WHICH TO BE FAIR they KIND of do that, but its nothing insane like giving you new grenade abilities or debuffs to enemies when you hit them with a certain weapon type its just mostly finishers and dash abilities.

Gunplay is awesome and creative and the designs are all cool looking. I have a complaint about some designs such as there being a limit to type of attachments you can add (Not gun mods like actual attachments like laser sight or bump stock). I will add more towards the end of the review concerning this though.

Narrative: 8.5/10

Main Quests/Main Side Quest narratives (IE Romance character questlines or Phantom Liberty Gigs) are INCREDIBLY written and super engaging. You're often given tons of options that are morally grey and allow you to form your own moral compass in this dystopian society where corporations run the world and politicians work for the highest bidder. I'm glad nothing like that happens in real life otherwise I'd have to get involved.

The highlight of all these is 100% your relationship to Johnny Silverhand (I will talk about Keanu Reeves' performance later in the review). I do not wanna spoil anything about his story or motivations he starts off as being a sexist self centered pig anarchist poser rocker boy to being a caring friend who realizes how many people he's hurt and wanting to do his best to atone.

Side Quests: Unfortunately about 80% of the side quests all kind of feel copy pasted in terms of their plots. I'll give the best example I can without spoiling specific missions:

You'll be helping someone either steal an item or kill a person of interest out of revenge. Once you get to the item or person of interest they'll turn around and say "wait but did you know the person you're working for is ALSO a scumbag who is doing this thing that is also bad so I'M actually the good guy" And the game will make you choose who to side with. While this makes sense unfortunately there is little to no depth to these claims as they are almost always 100% accurate and it's totally like no one in their position would have reason to lie or something when their life is being threatened. Now I can excuse this plot being one or two missions but... When it's copy pasted 10 or 15 times it gets quite annoying. They always boil down to "Which option gets me the best item or most money" Rather than "Which option do I believe is the right choice and requires more than face value decision making."

I will be including a statement at the end of this review as to why I believe this is a development choice and many others that feel either half finished or half baked.

Acting: 9/10 (Minus 1 point for using even the TINIEST bit of AI so 8/10)

Voice acting is AMAZING and truly shows the depth through the denizens of night city. Judy, Panam, Johnny, Reed, Viktor, Songbird, etc.... The list goes on. Very few games tug at your heart strings or make you feel someones pain or regret like these performances.

People say Reeves can't act or that he plays himself/the same character. To be honest I don't think they're invalid for thinking that. However when he plays that character he ROCKS it, and Silverhand isn't an exception.

Idris Elba's performance is second to none, I would say more but word limit. 10/10

Sadly NPCs, base goons/enemies all have the same 3 voice lines that can feel a bit repetitive but I'm not too fussed about that considering they hardly live long nuff for me to care.

BIGGEST complaint is Miłogost Reczek aka Viktor Vector having his voice cloned by AI by the developers for the Phantom Liberty Expansion due to Reczek passing away (Rest in Peace, Genuinely amazing performance). I don't care they got permission to use AI by the family it's disrespectful and lame. AI voice cloning ruins what makes Cyberpunk 2077's voice acting so unique and lovable (Just hire someone who sounds similar or even if they don't I don't care it's still miles better). I guarantee that by CD Projekt red stepping over that line they'll probably just keep going past till the line is just a dot to them. I promise that if there is any voice cloning in Cyberpunk: Orion I will refuse to play and will cease to ever play a single CD Projekt Red game period.

Graphics: 7/10

While I absolutely love the world building and the high definition models used by guns, cars, NPCs, Cyberware, and ETC. I genuinely have to give it a 7/10 because of how garbage the game runs in certain places if you're not running on low graphics and zero ray tracing. Of course if you have a NASA computer you could run Cyberpunk 2077 on that without much effort BUT even then I've got a 4060 RTX, 64 Gigs of ram, yada yada, and I still have tons of trouble if I go above Medium graphics and I CANNOT run ray tracing to save my life.

This game definitely isn't recommended if your PC is a potato as it would probably create a bigger disaster than Chernobyl.


CONCLUSION + WHY CYBERPUNK IS MISSING ELEMENTS
The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Cyberpunk 2077 Game and Legacy is one to be studied in gaming history.

Went from being one of the biggest train wrecks in the gaming industry second to only the launch of Overwatch 2 to being one of (in my personal opinion) the best narratives in gaming.

I have mentioned a few critical flaws I found with the game BUT I cannot glaze this game enough as it is one if not my all time favorite games of all time. I cannot state this enough and I cannot wait for Cyberpunk: Orion.

That being said here are some things I noticed the game lacked that was probably due to mismanagement by CD Projekt Red higher ups. Before I go into depth I'll give an incredibly brief story as to why Cyberpunk 2077 released as horribly as it did.

Originally when Cyberpunk 2077 was announced they had a normal team working on it. All was going according to plan until they released The Witcher 3, which became one of their most critically acclaimed games of all time. CD Projekt Red seeing dollar signs cut the development team of Cyberpunk in half and sent them off to work on Witcher 3.

Basically what I'm getting at is Cyberpunk 2077 was being cooked up on the back burner of CD Projekt Red for almost a decade. Which lead to tons of concepts such as in depth quests, gun modifications, customization, and more getting slashed so they could meet the unrealistic deadline by CD Projekt Red.

Who woulda known Corpos suck.

Anyways 9/10 game.