Recent reviews by eob

Ok, here goes, the first kinda proper review i've ever written for a game.

System Specs:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5900X @ Stock
GPU: Nvidia RTX 3080 @ Stock
RAM: 16GB
Display: 3440x1440 @ 144Hz

Performance:

I'll start with the big one, performance. It's alright, but nowhere near what it should be. I can average between 60-90 FPS at Ultra with DLSS Quality. While I understand this is absolutely a great experience, it's not a top of the line 2020 PC experience. I disabled RTX immediately as the performance impact was massive with next to no visual change. There is HUGE room for improvement, and from what I understand on lower end hardware the performance issues are huge.
No noticeable large framedrop spikes in any gameplay so far, however the inner city areas (Corpo Plaza mainly) are very taxing and cause a large average FPS drop

Gameplay/Story:
The one area the game really shines at the moment, The atmosphere and world design is phenomenal and I am loving the story, 20 hours in I have encountered a huge and interesting variety of engaging missions and characters. I have no shortage of things to do and I am just getting started. I honestly don't have all that much to say here, it's great.

Bugs:
There are a LOT, from T-Posing NPCs flickering in the roof of my car to cars pathfinding through walls, this game is NOT bug free. However as of yet I have not encountered any game breaking bugs, all the bugs have simply been rather entertaining and fairly minor. Note there are also a lot of ultrawide specific bugs, notably sometimes the game gets cropped to 16:9 with UI elements being hidden behind black bars, this can be fixed by entering and exiting the menu

The real issues:
And this is where things get quite disappointing. For the past couple of years CDPR has been hyping this game as being a truely next gen gaming experience and that the game would feel alive, it's not, it's not even close, i'll go through a few now.

AI:
The biggest one by far is the game's AI, or lackthereof. All NPC AI outside of scripted missions is nonexistent, both pedestrian and traffic. Traffic follows predetermined routes and WILL NOT deviate, Your car blocking the road? Cars will stop until you move, no attempt will be made to avoid. There is one location in the game where the vehicle path is slightly off from the road and leads it through a wall, and the cars simply flow straight through the wall, they arent being drivine by AI, they are simply on rails following the path. There is no vehicle chase system because the AI simply doesn't exist for it. The AI controlled driving is also very, very basic, turning happens around a point, the cars look very slidey as a result, this even happens in missions when you are being driven around, it's quite honestly my largest complaint so far. GTA San Andreas has significantly better traffic AI and that game is 16 years old.
Pedestrian AI is equally bad, no attempt is made for walking pedestrians to follow a natural path, more often than not they walk into each other and then walk off at random angles, if they get scared (gunshots etc) they run and stop somewhere and cower, they will not move from that spot until they despawn or get killed, often making it impossible to get in or out of rooms.

'Living World:'
Aside from the previously mentioned AI issues. Another big complaint is how little interaction there is with the NPCs of the world, for example there are HUNDREDS of in game food stalls and other shops, only a small fraction of those can actually be used by the player so you have to constantly study the map to see what's what, and I genuinely can't figure out why it's done like this. The world design as a whole is awesome, so much detail and so many little places to find, but the lack of any depth in the vast majority of these areas really hurts the overall experience. Traffic density is also an issue, there simply isn't enough, while I appreciate this is a performance thing, other games handle much more traffic fine. The game also has a thing where far off roads will render red and white lights to give the impression of distant traffic, while an interesting idea if you are driving fast it completely breaks immersion as you approach and they just disappear with completely empty roads replacing them. (Note I am playing on the highest traffic density)

Police:
I am actually unable to think of any police implementation worse than this, for starters I have yet to see a single NCPD car just driving around, the only police you see are stood around with their cars next to some dead body, if you do something illegal that gets you 'wanted' any police who can see you right there will open fire, if there are no police around, whereas any other game (I.e GTA) would have police drive to your area and search, Cyberpunk simply spawns a few cops around you and they open fire, again, again and again. To escape all you gotta do is drive out of the line of sight of the few cops that can see you, you can come down from a 4 star level as fast as a 1 star. The police will not chase either, so you just drive away and you lose the level. It's the most pointless implementation of police I have honestly ever seen. Without a complete overhaul of the AI in general this game will never get close to being what it could be.

I will keep this review updated as I find new things and things get fixed. For now I am marking this as not recommended.

TL;DR:
This game has massive potential, but it is absolutely not the next gen revolutionary game CDPR made it out to be and it is also not currently ready for release. I am having a blast with it but my suggestion would honestly be to wait, wait for a few patches and see where it is before buying.

This game is amazing. I saw it on steam greenlight a while ago and have finally got around to picking it up. The atmosphere and story is great and it looks amazing. Can't wait for Part 2

Love this game