Recent reviews by Narm

The game seen in the marketing (screenshots, videos, and Steam description) is not actually the full game. The game as advertised is only Act 1 of the game and is relatively short. Acts 2 and 3 are radically different from Act 1. I watched multiple trailers of this game and looked at the screenshots before buying and was still entirely unaware that this game is not really a roguelike deckbuilding horror game, but a narrative driven horror game with card game and deckbuilding elements (basically an ARG). The game I enjoyed ended after Act 1 and I no longer enjoyed what the game was. If the game had been marketed/advertised correctly I would not have purchased it. I'll be honest, I'm a tad bitter that the game I enjoyed and wanted to play doesn't really exist nor can I get a refund because I played more than 2 hours.

I'm enjoying the game overall, but it's not without its many faults. It's really fun, but it might not be what you're looking for and it has a lot of issues. I think it really deserves a pros and cons list so you can decide whether it's for you. I'll update as I get further into the game.

Pros:
- I absolutely love the setting, Night City is truly awesome. It's very well designed and just gorgeous (even the dirty and grungy parts). There's also a lot of really good worldbuilding going on. News stories playing in the background telling you about the world, TV shows you can watch that give you interesting information, and ads for fake brands all over the place. The atmosphere is great.
- The different intros (Lifepaths) are really cool and a great way to introduce you to the game. I really like Nomad and Corpo.
- Good amount of weapon options.
- Combat is decent. I'm having a lot of fun shooting and slicing enemies up. Gunplay feels pretty good and fun. Melee weapons are also feel pretty fun to use.
- Missions are engaging and the storyline is really interesting. I'm enjoying the hell out of the missions.
- Very good character development. I feel like they put a lot of work into making the characters feel real and interesting. A lot of games fail on this point.
- The character customization is pretty neat. The characters you can make generally look good and not like abominations. There's a lot of hairstyle, hair color, makeup, nail color, and eye color options to choose from.
- I really appreciate that the game allows you to make trans characters. Having your identity (pronouns and voice), body shape, and genitals be seperate choices is really refreshing.
- It's pretty great that the game actually lets your character be nude. It doesn't really affect gameplay, but I've always thought it was crazy that gratuitous violence and gore are considered acceptible while nudity and sex aren't.

Cons:
- There's no meaningful choice in the game. The game isn't so much a role-playing game as it is an open world action-adventure game with RPG elements. It's very light on the role-playing to the point that I wouldn't classify it as a RPG at all. There are some different dialogue options, but they don't really change anything and aren't meaningful for your character. You do get to make decisions here and there, so it's not like there's no choice at all, but the choices don't drastically change your experience. Essentially it's a linear story with a few options here or there and you have the ability to pick which side missions you want to complete. Aslo, while you get to customize your character, you aren't really playing your own version of the main character. The dialogue options are all basically the same with some providing you more information than others. Games like the Fallout series and the Mass Effect series actually have crazy amounts of dialogue options in comparison to Cyberpunk 2077.
- V was obviously designed as a distinct character, specifically a Streetkid no matter what Lifepath you choose. It can be off-putting to start as a Corpo and have the sarcastic voice/tone of a Streetkid. The Lifepaths really should have determined the voice of V, though that would have meant recording 6 versions of the voice instead of 2.
- The game doesn't have any actual classes. CD Project Red stated at one point that Cyberpunk 2077 would include roles (classes) from the Cyberpunk tabletop RPG, including unconventional classes like journalist. They ended up not doing that. They kind of included a few in the Lifepaths, but they aren't classes. Part of me was hoping for more variance in gameplay (based on the way CPR described the game), like playing as a journalist who doesn't actually participate in combat.
- You can't actually interact with Night City in meaningful ways. I really appreciate the open worlds of Skyrim and Fallout 4 more after playing Cyberpunk 2077. Those worlds make you want to explore more and more of the world while Night City doesn't create that same level of excitement and desire to explore. The city is a mile wide and an inch deep.
- There's no way to customize your character after character creation. Not being able to change up your character's physical features is one thing, but you can't even change your hairstyle, hair color, or makeup.
- While character customization is good, it would be nice if you could customize the body type/shape of your character beyond only feminine or masculine. Also, I wish there were more tattoo options.
- There's no home/apartment customization.
- Armor is directly tied to clothing. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but in a game where styling your character is one of the selling points, it's odd to encourage you to keep switching to clothes you might not want to wear. The game would really benefit from a transmog system. It does have a system allowing you to upgrade your clothing however.
- The driving isn't great. It's hard to drive straight. Also, someone needs to take a look at the brakes because the stopping distance is absurdly long (feels like cars have 1977 brakes rather than 2077 brakes).
- NPCs are as dumb as a bag of rocks. Many of them have very poor pathing. They will also pop in and out of existence. Don't expect any sort of intelligent interaction with generic NPCs. If you're wanted, police officers can start spawning in absurd locations in an attempt to take you down.
- NPCs don't react at all if you walk around naked. Like, it's not a necessary feature, but even Fallout 4 has it.
- The inventory system is very sloppy.
- Only 4 real romance options other than a couple of side character options and they're limited by gender.
- There's only 2 sex workers in the whole game. This is another feature that's not necessary, but it's baffling when so much of the game's atmosphere relies on sex.
- The sex scenes are rather tame. Again, not necessary, but baffling.
- Braindances (VR) are only present in missions. You can even purchase braindances, but they don't do anything. Seems like they were a cut feature.
- It's buggy. I've encountered plenty of visual bugs, a decent number of gameplay bugs, and a gamebreaking bug that required me to reload my save to fix it.
- It literally will corrupt your save file if it goes over 8 MB.

Dead game.

First, they removed the two modes I enjoyed playing: Execution and Guardian. Now, they've removed all last man standing modes from the game and made ranked 4 player only. The Coalition has finally killed the game.

Apparently the developers (Chucklefish) didn't actually pay the developers who worked on this game. Incredibly scummy.

Super cheesy and super fun. If you like city building or management games, you'll like this game. I really enjoy how campy and entertaining it is. I'm drunk.

The core of this game is fun, but it has so many bugs that I can't recommend it.

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I actually uninstalled it and loaded an earlier save because I disliked it that much.

Really great game, especially if you love city building or survival games. It's even better now that endless mode is out.

Really fun game to play with your friends.