Cyberpunk 2077 is an odyssey instead of just a linear narrative RPG game. Night City seems dense and well-populated, but it isn’t just the people that give this place a personality. The world is filled with many other elements that breathe life into it. There are few instances when you’re in Night City and feel lost as each sector is well defined and detailed according to the people that populate it. And somehow, it feels like a remark on the densely populated and polluted cities right now.
Cyberpunk 2077 often feels like a commentary and prediction of where our lives are going, and this is where the RPG element of the game comes to light. Usually, as you dive into the game, a feeling of immersion sets in as if you’re talking to the characters yourselves, and the first-person perspective starts to make sense.
Story – Can You Put A Price On Freedom?
While this often gets overlooked immediately, I always believed that Cyberpunk 2077 was a story about the characters wanting to find their freedom. This freedom isn’t just represented by putting you in shackles and your character arising to the occasion and breaking free. This freedom is more poetic and personal for everyone.
Characters like Johnny Silverhand, V, Panam, Judy, Rogue, and many more are looking to escape these constant overwhelming events but are tied down, and it is in your hands what freedom means to you and who you’d like to be.
The story of Cyberpunk 2077 starts with three beginnings, and depending on how you wish your character to progress, you can pick to be a Street Kid, Corpo, or a Nomad. Each life path is bursting with characters that will have you interact with them and form an emotional bond throughout the game.
The only thing I felt lacked in the story was a bit of cohesiveness. As I kept progressing, a new phone call every 5 minutes would alert me about a quest. It soon became a constant theme, and though I was glad to complete all of these quests, it started getting a bit heavy.
Compared to CD Projekt RED’s Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, each side quest had a meaning and reasoning. You felt compelled in that game, and while you may not think as made here, they’re still worth the time you invest into them. The story will take you into the personal lives of the characters you interact with within and outside Night City.
Gameplay – FPS Game Mimicking FPS Shooters?
For the first couple of minutes, you will wish Cyberpunk 2077 had a third-person perspective mode. This drowns out soon enough as you keep meeting characters. The game isn’t just horizontally vast but vertically as well. The gameplay isn’t as polished as you’d want a AAA title to be; we now know that Cyberpunk 2077 was a bit rushed, and along came some problems; luckily, the day one patch fixed a lot of that.
But it feels like a completely different game when Cyberpunk 2077 decides to deliver on all cylinders. All the issues become irrelevant as you spend hours investing in the game.
What works for Cyberpunk 2077 the most is that you’re in the driving seat to play the game however you wish. The Stealth approach helped me crawl out of dangerous situations a million times, but there’s something sweet about going in all guns blazing, and I highly recommend that you try it out once when your character can.
Cyberpunk 2077 looks like a next-gen game, but the quests and narratives are still far from progressing. You will feel the restraint in some parts of the game where you wish something different could make this memorable or just enjoyable enough to keep doing it repeatedly.
I always believed that Witcher 3 and Persona 5 Royal would be the pinnacle of RPGs as they deliver some of the rawest and most authentic experiences of narrative divergence and self-driving expertise. Still, Cyberpunk 2077 sometimes takes things beyond those two games and other times delivers just below it.
You’re bombarded with quests and main story jobs as soon as you complete the game’s prologue, which can take 3-7 hours, depending on how many side missions you’re targeting. And it is in these side missions that you get to enjoy the best parts about Cyberpunk 2077; it becomes irrelevant what Life Path you choose right after the prologue of the game, though you get some lifepath-based conversation replies that help you other than that, it does not matter much.
Like every good RPG, Cyberpunk 2077 delivers the crux of the game in its side quests; this shows that CD Projekt RED heavily emphasizes making sure each quest is lovely, vibrant, vivid, and memorable.
These quests will also ensure you meet with many other characters you might not get to otherwise. The side quests aren’t just the alternate things you would do when you don’t want to complete main quests, but these feel like an extension.
Graphics – Breathtaking
Everyone knew what Cyberpunk 2077 would look like even before the game launched. We’d been treated to many gameplay videos and trailers, but when you play Cyberpunk 2077, you realize how fascinating and believable things are.
This isn’t to say there aren’t bugs or glitches in the game. There are tons of them, but when the game decides to run smoothly. You’ll keep asking for more. The streets start to look familiar, and the buildings from afar will let you know where exactly you are.
Each character, especially Johnny Silverhand, has been well crafted and acted excellently. He carries a certain charm that makes you like this tortured character more. Other than that, there’s a nice Cyberpunk vibe that bases itself as a theme for the rest of the game.
Bugs
What stops Cyberpunk 2077 from being enjoyed are the bugs that have been present in the game because the developers rushed it. Some aspects of the match refuse to work with one another.
Few important characters will vanish from your quest, and you’ll have to load up an earlier save. To progress in Cyberpunk 2077, it often feels like you have to keep going back and doing things a bit differently.
However, one packet smoothed many things over the day, but the same cannot be said about the last-gen console versions of Cyberpunk 2077.
Music
The music you hear throughout the game often drives the tempo of this large and dense world. It feels like stepping into a new generation of music waiting to be discovered, but it hits hard during combat.
The combat music has been worked on to perfection and often will keep you engaged in the fight and make you push yourself even if an army is out to get you. It is the most significant motivating factor. Each character has its music, and you can predict players and their narratives by what they bring to the game.
Panam has a grunge type of vibe to her, and so does Rogue, but on the other hand, when you talk to Hanako Arasaka or even Meredith Stout, things get more clinical and precise. The music helps to define the characters’ personalities and make them believable.
Finally, our rocker boy Johnny Silverhand has the best musical aura that follows him around, being a war veteran, musician, and terrorist. The chaos and destruction in the game will intimately blast you.
Verdict
Cyberpunk 2077 seems like a half-baked game that pushes itself to the max to deliver an outstanding performance on PC. The characters seem believable, and you will lose yourself in Cyberpunk 2077 as you set foot in Night City.
The progression seems natural for a game about Cybernetic upgrades; the characters’ warmth helps them connect and accomplish their tasks. Cyberpunk 2077, from a broad perspective, feels like being sucked into a black hole, and while things seem fast and hurried when you invest yourself, the game unfolds each chapter in a beautiful narrative that is going to be remembered for a long time.
When purchasing Cyberpunk 2077, I recommend that you get the game when things have settled and all the updates have made playing the game a much better experience. Or you could purchase it now and wait for a couple of months before diving into the world of Night City.
