*Spoiler free*

At the time of writing this review, i've done a 100% corpo playthrough on very hard as well as a melee run on normal sprinting thru to obtain the secret ending.

I experienced minimal graphical bugs while playing. I did not experience any bugs that disrupted my game experience any more than having to reload my game and one instance i will mention below.

Pros:

True evolution of the bread crumb story system. Those familiar with the concept of save scumming will be happy to know that an extra 20-30 hours or multiple unique playthroughs can be squeezed out just by simply trying all of the text options or trying a different combat approach. Different combat and pacifist approaches can lead to entire new quest chains or missed opportunities. Without going into too much detail, multiple friends and I have had majorly different outcomes playing the same class in the same style/build as well as found tertiary outcomes in subsequent playthroughs. Can't stress how good this aspect is enough.

Side content for days. While the main story itself is only 15-20 hours, the side content is easily double if not triple that. Between cyberpsychos/gigs/police/side kick story quests/flavor text quests it can actually be quite overwhelming when you begin the game. For the full experience I highly recommend completing all of the sidekick story quests as they give the opportunity to experience the most endings as well as inject the most girth into the primary story. Easily the highlight of the game. This is obvious when comparing my two playthroughs, in the 100% one I had a complete feeling of understanding. the directions things were going were carried by these side quests, all of the motivations and history are there. In my rushed playthrough, it simply felt like a series of conversations with johnny silverhand and taking turns swapping bodies. completely different experiences. I just felt like I was rushing around doing errands for johnny by pushing only the main story.

Night City. It's the best city video games have blessed us with to date. Yes, despite the "crowd AI'' not being amazing. Yes, despite there not being "1k+ routines." Yes, I played RDR2 and GTAV and yada yada yada. Night City is alive and you can hear it breathing. This is amplified 10x when you acquire the double jump or rocket jump legs. The verticality they promised was delivered in spades. EVERYTHING is climbable. Give it a shot. Look around.

Endings. 6 of them ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. SIX. 1 is hilarious (in a morbid way). 1 was the appropriate ending(IMO). 1 was out of a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ AAA blockbuster movie. 1 is what gamers want. 1 is trippy. 1 is sad.

Make a save at the point of no return and give em all a shot. They're worth it.

Cons:

Loot. If you played Witcher 3, it's the same song and dance. Massive amounts of useless scaled loot where everywhere you look you see slight 1% dps upgrades to already existing items. Add onto that you have a weight/stash system and it just becomes a chore by the end game. If you are a packrat like me, invest into the body perk for 60 extra carrying capacity for peace of mind. The exception to this con are the "iconic weapons'' that are unlocked after completing certain criteria. Unique and useful, I found "skippy" to be the best weapon in the entire game. Look out for him and the other icons :)

Lifepaths. Thankfully on my first playthrough I chose corpo. I feel like I had ample chat options that really fell into line with the core story path and made me feel initially that lifepaths weren't as bad as people made them out to be. After experiencing nomad and corpo both to completion I can say that this section really does feel unfinished. There needs to be more content before coming into night city as a nomad and building up the relationship with jackie in the prologue. Again, rushed. Sad. One of my most anticipated features.

AI. This is as of the day 1 version of the game. The combat AI is.....bad. It is only saved by the fact that you can use guns and snipe people from the shadows from a distance. After having played a full melee and ranged playthrough, melee is in a rough spot. Don't take this to mean that melee is more difficult, it simply means that the AI is so bad that they clump up and spin in circles or glitch through walls to 1 shot you with a shotgun and you will end up getting gangbanged every time. Cop AI is....missing. If you commit a crime and get 4 stars just let them kill you or drive away far enough, they will simply give up. There are no correction routines for driving AI. Simply park your car on the road to create an infinite traffic jam.No crash reactions. No crash animations. You can hit a wall at 200 mph and be fine. They make no attempts to course correct or avoid collision, same with the crowd AI. If you double jump in public people will just...huddle near you..scared for their life? Again, AI feels missing.

Limited romance options. For all the controversy and hype this topic got it ended up so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bland. I know its a weird thing to complain about but I can walk around and see vulgarity at every corner and you're telling me theres no brain dance station to plug into? there's 1 brothel in all of night city? only 2 joytoys? Again I understand how minor this is. Just confusing. Most of the primary romance options in this game only "swing" one way, based on the "gender" you chose at the beginning of the game. So if you went in with ideas of who you wanted to ♥♥♥♥, you may be very dissapointed (if you care at all.)

Braindance sequences in the primary story. Thought they were too specific with requiring you to wait for chat dialogue to finish. rewind/fast forward is too slow and not snappy to your inputs. you can end up just looking around aimlessly looking for 1 piece to scan at a specific timestamp. Not very interesting overall and I believe they could have been better served as a cutscene. Overall boring.
I had one graphical bug that came at a very unfortunate moment during the prologue. A pistol went thru a key members head during a pivotal scene and really ruined the mood. This was the only instance of immersion breaking i experienced from bugs other than typical day 1 shenanigans.

No Mini-games. Not even gwent? cmon.

Conclusion:

Without going into story specific details, this is one of the most enjoyable RPGs i've played in my life. The amount of variables you have to play with in the beautiful world of night city is actually crazy. When I read reviewers saying that they hated johnny silverhand because he was an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ or that they didnt really understand the story and that it all felt rushed, I feel bad. Or I read on reddit that the game was too buggy to enjoy and there were too many dropped/cut features to be a "good game", I feel bad. We played different games. I got an 80-100 hour open world RPG set in a cyberpunk universe with characters that had personality, a story that had me wondering about the possibilities so much that I immediately started a second playthrough. A city that was handcrafted top to bottom with views so nice I was constantly snapshotting and posting them on discord. A soundtrack that had me wanting to sit in cars to finish tracks. I got a game that I am disappointed having finished.

Waitin to slurp up that DLC.


Overall Rating:

My Gut says 6 months from now or whenever the first DLC drops this game will be a 9.2-9.5. In its current state I would give it an 8.7-8.9 ish. 10s dont exist. Wake up, Choom.