Recent reviews by Fern

The game is pretty good value for money. Had about 30 hours to get through the currently available main story which whenever the last story update comes out will probably give around 35 hours total of gameplay just through the main story line. This is a lot better than any modern Pokemon titles Ive played so if you have the money and are interested in something like Pokemon for PC this is definitely a good game.

While I would recommend this game, the end game leaves a lot to be desired for. The game will leave you with about 40k currency after the main story, less than half that needed to buy some perfectly trained Tems. Since the game has been out for a while the economy has gotten very inflated, much past being available to new players. The cost to breed your own perfect Tems is about twice that of what you will end with as well leaving you to grind often times for days to get good Tems with 5% drop rates, or hope that the Tem you want is in rotation at the Saipark with SV minimums. Essentially this leaves you with doing fishing and raids until you get the materials through RNG to breed your own Tems, which then you can sell for more breeding items and repeat the process. This leaves basically only 1 endgame route to do, not to mention the fact that the best way to make money in the end game without selling Tems is pretty well locked behind having solid roles on your Tems to begin with. Having more ways to make money in the end game would be great, but right now it just turns into the same grind on repeat.

For those who will not read the full review, here is a beginning summary. The game is good, I would say it is worth it, especially if you enjoy this type of game. The bugs and performance issues can be bad but are more immersion breaking than game breaking and will only get better over time. This game is much more a summation of current gen than the beginning of a new generation, but it is a good game nonetheless.

Story (8.5/10)

The story is good, the main line is intriguing to follow, and the side stories have meaningful impact on the game. That said I did find that it has some pacing issues which can both make it hard to get into, and make it hard to genuinely care about the characters. The beginning is rather slow, and it takes about 4 hours before you become genuinely interested if you become interested at all. This issue breaks my 'tutorial time' limits where players will attempt to get a feel for the game in the time up to the refund limit. Failing to capture the audience in this time is a big downfall here as it could mean a loss of people who would otherwise enjoy the game, and those same people can leave with a negative experience that they would be hard to convince away from. I myself ran into this where 3 hours in I was thinking I would give up this game for good, much like I did Half Life Alyx and many other single player games. That said I'm glad I didn't as the story quickly becomes much more interesting, and I would say is worth my time completely. The other issue I had was characters coming and going too quickly. I felt like I was not able to make an actual connection to too many characters, and as such had little reaction to any consequences they faced. It was hard for characters to get their point across in a way that had any impact on myself personally. While I have been pretty critical, it's only 2 relatively small things that I have any criticism on, which I think goes to show how much they have done right in the 15-20 hours the main story line takes. While not perfect, I do not think the story is the biggest expectation for this game, and as such I think it's good and more than sufficient to fulfill its purpose.

Quest Gameplay (10/10)

The quests in this game feel amazing. There is every reason to get lost doing side quests for hours on end, and many quest lines you wish would continue so you can play more. The ability to get distracted doing side quests is a huge testament to the quality that they have. The main missions are also of high quality, with a lot of variance in each one you play. While the main story takes maybe 12-15 hours, it is definitely in your best interest to play all of the side main quests as well, each will open up opportunities for you and you feel rewarded as such. I ended up beating the game in 33 hours, and since have another 22 just doing side missions, and they add a lot to the depth of the world and the story in Cyberpunk 2077.

Performance (6/10)

Its acceptable, and manageable, but far from ideal. Framerates are rough if you want to truly experience what the height of current graphics looks like. Further, this includes things like bugs which I'm sure anyone reading this will have already heard about. For me, within the main story lines, there were few bugs, and none game breaking. That said they can be immersion breaking, like when you talk to another character and see a NPC spawn inside of a shop and hover animation-less through the wall like Christ himself. Things like this will hopefully get better as time goes on, but in its current state my immersion was definitely broken a fair few times. The side quests are where you truly feel the bugs though, whether it be being told to enter a car that is upside down and on fire, or getting stuck on a railing unable to move forcing you to reload a save, maybe falling through the floor out of the world, or walking into a building with no collision on a wall, there are many bugs that you have to deal with that can take away from the experience. I really do hope these bugs and performance problems get better throughout the lifetime of the game, and I'm sure CDPR will work on these as they have a good track record in doing so, but they can get annoying and invasive at times.

Conclusion

Overall I was not too excited to play this game, it was more a game to test my new hardware consisting of a 5800X and a 3070. As such I did not really have any expectations going into the game, which I think helped me a lot. There are many people who envisioned an industry defining game of a scale that would change gaming as we know it, it's not that. There are many people who envisioned something that would define the next generation of gaming, bringing people things that have never been seen before, it's not that. There are people who envisioned a city that would be as interactive and responsive as you could find in the real world, it's not that. This game is a culmination of what has made gaming great so far, one that takes the best we have learned from graphics, story, world design, sound design, and more and put it into what I would call the final paper on the class of current generation gaming. The story, quests, and options feel much like the best of borderlands and fallout, graphics are on par with something like shadow of the tomb raider, sound design matching the likes of doom, world design like GTA, and while it might not individually be the best at everything, it does a real good job of mimicking what makes those great. As such it does something none of those games do, it puts it all together into a single game that is meant to define an era. To really do this, it would need to add a multiplayer of the likes of GTA, and while a multiplayer is being worked on, it will be interesting to see if its no more than a co-op campaign or a full scale open world online game. This could be what defines Cyberpunk 2077 as either the best of the generation, or just one of the greats, only time will tell. That said the game as it is now is still great, and will only get better with both patches and DLC throughout the life of the game. It is hard not to judge this game off the hype it received, and it feels much like a Game Dev Tycoon game that comes out with upper middle reviews but far too much hype, however in my own most objective viewpoint I give the game an 8/10. With time this might become a 9, or even a 10 given a multiplayer, however in its current state I would say it is just too clunky and buggy to be higher. I think it was released maybe a year too early, and if held longer would likely be a 9/10, but I can only review what I have played, and from what I have played this is how I would rate it.

For full thoughts I have a document here. [docs.google.com]