Hey everybody, I wrote early impressions of the game a couple of days ago when I only had maybe four to five hours of game time, so I thought I would come back and provide additional impressions of the game after 10 hours of game time.
Please note that the impression does not contain any story spoilers and is pretty broad in stroke.
Story
The story of cyberpunk is unexpected in many ways, and I think they did an excellent job of ensuring that people won't know how it's going to be told or how vital a lot of the characters that were revealed through gameplay and trailers will be. I'm not saying that the characters that have been revealed are going to be useless or incredibly important, but I will say that I was delighted to see how the story plays out after the first act.
One of the strongest aspects of the game so far is its writing and its pacing. Some of you might have noticed that I said that I completed Act One within 4 hours, but truth be told, my experience was quite a bit longer and was more in line with what other people with early copies had said where it had taken them you know around six hours to get through.
Now for reference, I am someone who is often annoyed with how long games are. The last really long game that I enjoyed was the Witcher 3, and the last long game that I noticed needed to be cut down significantly because there were multiple times where it felt that the game was over was the Last of Us Part 2. So it's incredible that I could essentially play 6 hours of the game and feel like only 4 hours had passed.
To go back to the writing of the story so far, I find that many of the characters are well written. They have great voice actors, and I feel like every character has a unique personality that stands out and makes them memorable.
Gameplay
When it comes to the gameplay of cyberpunk, I'm finding that the two main pillars, driving and shooting, are well thought out and have a layer of complexity to them that is almost overwhelming in a sense. There's a lot of perks, weapons, and vehicles to choose from, and it basically covers just about any play style you want to have. Compared to other RPGs, the amount of variety is on the level of a Bethesda game. You truly can decide to be a unique character that no one else will copy one to one. I still have not even scratched the surface of many of the perks, weapons, and vehicles that you can obtain. There is just so much.
Gunplay in particular is very satisfying. The weapons have great sounds and animations attached to them, and overall I would describe it as being punchy.
Vehicles sound like cars in a Forza game. It's ridiculous. Their handling feels more in line with GTAs, but that just makes it even more fun.
Quests
So far, I've done mainly the main quests and some side missions, and I find that a lot of them are well-paced but they aren't anything groundbreaking or mind-blowing. I do need to stress that you should temper your expectations for the gameplay of the quests themselves. It's not as diverse in terms of approach as the gameplay trailers have made them. One of the things that I wanted to highlight was that the game's hacking ability doesn't feel intuitive enough to want to use. It's like a hybrid of Watch Dogs and that annoying little mini-game puzzle in Spiderman PS4.
World
The environments that you experience on these quests are all well detailed and well lit. But it feels like there isn't the type of life that you're expecting. Population density is only felt when you're in clubs or walking out of your apartment.
What doesn't wow me about the game is the worldbuilding and immersion. Again, when I think of RPGs, I tend to think of CD Projekt red games like the Witcher 3 or Bethesda RPGs like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, where worldbuilding and immersion are critical. One of the issues that I have with cyberpunk regarding that is that there seems to be a lack of attention to a lot of small detail to actions that tons of players who are familiar with RPG's love to engage with. I'm talking mainly about being able to see a chair and go sit in it, or seeing a shop and actually being able to go into it, rather than only limited to interactions with the environment when it's a mission.
The most immersive aspect of the game is that you are in the first person 100% of the time.
Wanted system mini-rant
I want to go on a mini rant about the Wanted System in the game. When you commit a crime in front of people, you will begin to attract police attention, and as a result, you have literally two options when it comes to engaging the police: you either kill them all and then escape or you don't kill them all, and you escape. There is no getting arrested. You just die or escape.
There also isn't any sort of bounty system in place that carries weight. You get told that a bounty / warrant is placed on you, but when you walk past a group of cops on the road, unless you're in their face, they aren't even phased by you. It just doesn't make any sense to me that the police don't automatically recognize you if you just escaped from an intense situation where you killed a couple of cops 3 minutes ago.
Final thoughts as I continue playing
I've played 10 hours so far and I've had a lot of good fun with the game there is a lot to like about it and there is a lot too be disappointed with.
I think people really need to temper their expectations for what they think that they're getting. It feels like it should have been deeper and it isn't.
This game feels like a 7 out of 10 to me currently.
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