4/5 ★ – Speady9's review of Cyberpunk 2077.

Not gonna sugarcoat the situation with this game here. Cyberpunk 2077 is an absolutely incredible ride...and that's a goddamn shame, considering the state of which it was released in. This title is not only an excellent sci-fi role-playing game, but an extremely impressive one at that. When compared to other games in the genre, such as Fallout or The Outer Worlds, there's a notable difference in world density and production here. For starters, everything about Night City and the settings established in Cyberpunk 2077 breathes high in quality! From the tightly-packed map to the dynamic character animations through dialogue sequences alone, this reminds me a lot of what games like Red Dead Redemption 2 did right: everything feels alive. The art direction and added HDR support made me fall in love with the absolute eye candy that this open world offered. I just kinda wish they added a bit more features here, although I can understand the drawbacks for last-gen hardware. Of course, with a role-playing game, comes a deep narrative. Cyberpunk 2077 is the most fun I've had in a sci-fi video game in a long while. The main player V (who's female voice actor I thought performed really great), as well as other dynamic characters like Jackie, Judy, and the hardcore Johnny Silverhand, all blend well in this setting. I personally LOVED the main story they were telling, being the sci-fi fanatic I am, as it wasn't afraid to pull any punches. My only real gripe is the way sidequests are thrown at you, especially with a story that's notably a "time-sensitive" one (no spoilers). Had this game been a stealth FPS of sorts, I would totally understand, but the assignment of several sidequests at a time just places dissonance on the narrative itself. If it weren't for the glaring technical issues however, I'd honestly give this game a perfect score. Even playing on PS5, I had more issues with actual bugs and scripting than the game's graphics and performance. Not only full-on game crashes were apparent, but random glitches that occur from time to time that required me to find an earlier save to load into. It's the one issue with this game that's making it far from perfect, and I highly advise many to wait a bit longer so they can patch things up a bit. Like I said, this game does some incredible things in the way it's presented, from scripting to animations, so I can honestly understand why these bugs are apparent. This title is extremely ambitious and ahead of its time, and this is more proof that it needed a bit more time in the oven. Cyberpunk 2077 needs some patching time before it's perfect in my eyes. That's not to say the story, world, and characters weren't worthy of my praise enough, but the glaring roughness of its technical performance is one that holds this experience back. All that being said, this is a role-playing game that I might actually find myself replaying a year or so down the line, once next-gen hardware and current-gen software both meet in tandem. No one should miss out on an experience like this, but it's just a bit too early to pull the trigger.