5/5 ★ – pixelsaturn's review of Cyberpunk 2077.

Date beaten: 13/03/22 Platform: Xbox Series X Time played: 27.5 hours When Cyberpunk 2077 was released back in the last stages of 2020, it was a mess. Everyone knows that, so I'm not going to go into it much at all. But, it's true. From the outside, I was baffled by the entire thing... the launch, the broken promises surrounding content and crunch, how the entire thing seemed to have been completely mismanaged, resulting in an unfinished product that disappointed a LOT of people. Well, I'm here to tell you that none of that matters anymore, chooms. Over a year later, Cyberpunk is in very stable condition... and I absolutely fucking loved my time with it. It's not without issues, nothing is perfect after all, but my experience of this game was one of unfettered joy, awe and obsession. This world and these characters encapsulated me in a way that no videogame has since I rolled credits in Red Dead Redemption II... and that alone is worth a hell of a lot. So, I guess I'll get into the rambly part now. First off, Night City. God damn Night City. Few open world games feel like this. Night City is almost the main character of this game... from the pristine corpo glass towers to the disgusting, crime-infested streets below and everything inbetween, without any of it, Cyberpunk 2077 would not be the same game. A lot of this game's successes are owed to just how well realised and detailed this setting is. Not to mention, it is absolutely BEAUTIFUL. Even in its ugliest, dirtiest and sleaziest nooks and crannies, it truly is something to behold. Sometimes I would just drive around for no reason, which is not something I do in open world games often, just to take in the atmosphere and the scope of it all. Within all of this are so many characters to hate, fall in love with, and become lifelong chooms with. To be honest, I barely even scratched the surface of characters you can befriend in this game. I did a fair amount of side stuff, a few completed side stories, but I still had TONNES of stuff left on my side gig list... I was just so intrigued by the main story and the characters that I'd already met that I arrived at the final missions very quickly and had to do some backtracking so as not to miss so much of the stories this game has to tell. And I'm so glad I took that time, because there are characters in this that are already some of my favourite across this entire medium. Lookin' at you, Judy Alvarez. Sure, there are flaws with this game. I'm no RPG expert, considering I've only beaten about 5 of them in my entire life, but even I thought the RPG elements in this could've been better. Still, for me, as someone with limited knowledge of the genre, it was perfectly fine and I honestly had more fun playing this as a narrative driven action open world shooter anyway. There are still some bugs and some jank too, but I think in my entire playthrough I saw about...6 obvious bugs and another handful of extremely minor ones. And the most obvious ones were pretty funny, and didn't bother me in the slightest. So, basically, Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the richest and most engrossing videogame stories I have ever had the pleasure of interacting with, set within one of the most intoxicating and gorgeous worlds that I've ever experienced. I will not forget you, Night City.