I decided to wrap up my play through last night, having completed most of the side quests and activities. There are some left over to either pick off later or do on a subsequent playthrough / if I feel like trying to 100% this thing. I've seen two of the available endings so far and they were both appropriate and pretty hard hitting. Not many games move me, but this one did. The narrative is very well done.
I've said this before, but I'll reiterate. This isn't really an RPG. If you think Borderlands with more story elements or Deus Ex with more shooting is an RPG, then fine, it's an RPG
(but you're wrong).
That being said, I didn't really care that it wasn't an RPG. I didn't follow the marketing much other than the news that they changed the RPG description to be an open world action adventure or something during development, and to see some of the videos where it looked like a GTA mod. As a result, I didn't have sky high expectations for the game, so it managed to exceed my expectations in pretty much every way. There are some bugs that would be good to work out, but they were fairly minor (graphical glitches, etc.) with the only major bug that actually irritated me being the behaviour of police. The police, as noted around don't really chase much and are ridiculously easy to evade, but also they sometimes just disappear. One time I grenaded a group of Netwatch officers because I felt like it and got into this major shoot out with the police. I took cover around a corner and... they all disappeared like I was in the Twilight Zone. I LARPed that V's brain glitched out again and moved on, but it still sucked.
I get why this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I thought it was awesome due to its presentation. It's probably the best looking game I've played to date, although I mostly play RPGs and strategy games, so this isn't necessarily a high bar to clear. The game presents all sorts of stuff I imagined as a kid reading cyberpunk novels or playing Shadowrun tabletop (which is similar in a lot of ways to Cyberpunk 2020, if CP2020 was crossed with D&D elements like orcs, dragons, and magic). The glow of the neon lights at night, the rain, smart bullets whizzing around and changing direction in flight due to their microprocessors, wired reflexes that you can kick in and wipe out a room of guys before they know you're there, etc., etc. while still being screwed over by megacorps because it doesn't matter how badass you are when the entire system is rigged against you. Normally I'm against most nudity and sex in games because I think it's gratuitous and out of place. Here, I found the sex scenes fairly cringey, but the nudity and presentation of sexuality and objectification fit with the setting very well. So whether the game has Ultima VII level NPC schedules and created a "living world" or whatever the fuck doesn't matter to me. They have presented the world, setting, and genre in a way that hit all the right points for me as a fan of the cyberpunk genre and made me geek out in a way that few games do.
All in all, with a PC that can run it at a reasonable frame rate* I'd have to say this is my GOTY overall. It's the best game I played across all systems. It is NOT the best RPG I've played and I would not classify it as an RPG at all except maybe in some RPG-lite subcategory full of shooters with skill customization and dialog like Borderlands, Deus Ex, or Mass Effect.
Final verdict: I rate the game at
out of
Tech note:
I ran the game at 2560 x 1440 at mostly a mixture of high and ultra settings, with ray tracing generally turned off and not using DLSS. At times I turned ray tracing on and also turned on DLSS, but overall, I found not using DLSS or ray tracing to be the better option.
* say 40+, depending on your preferences - there's a chart on GOG that gives benchmarks to hit around 40+ FPS at given settings if you're not sure if your potato will run it.
