Cyberpunk 2077 Review - Is It Really Worth The Wait?

The seven years of waiting, several postponements and an incredibly high level of hype-the road to the release of Cyberpunk 2077 was not easy. For CD Projekt RED, this game seems to be a magnum opus, and for players-proof that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was not an accident and that the studio can consistently create iconic and very cool projects. I thought for a long time about what to write at the beginning of the review, but in the end I decided that these three words would be enough: "the wait was worth it." This is exactly the game that is needed at the start of the next console generation. Bright, exciting and multi-faceted. The game for which CD Projekt once again jumped above its head.
A place where you can discuss Cyberpunk 2077 and review "Kanobu" — with and without spoilers
Cyberpunk 2077 was distributed to the press on December 1-exactly a week before the fall of the embargo on reviews. I even thought that I would not have enough time to complete the storyline, but as a result, not only did I manage to "close" the plot, but also a dozen or two side quests were completed. The developers decided not to go "the way of Ubisoft" and did not make the open world even bigger than it was in their previous game — on the contrary, they noticeably stung it, made it more compact.

At the same time, there is still a lot of content — even if you discard all the "garbage" quests like "go to the landfill and beat off the kidneys of gopnik with rebar", which there are a lot of. Chains of side tasks, some optional stories in the spirit of "Vi enters the cafe exactly at the moment when the institution is trying to rob", various activities like "knock out the boss / steal data / save the hostage" and all that. You will spend more than a hundred hours on mastering all the content for sure — believe me, there is something to do in Night City.

And I will tell you about all the most important things related to one of the main games of the year. The world and its content
Many open-world games have one disastrous problem — they make this very open world huge in order to artificially stretch the passage time (hello, Ubisoft!). Another problem with this approach is that sometimes you have to search for interesting content for a long time. In Cyberpunk 2077, everything is much better with this.

As I mentioned, the world of the game is hardly huge. It is more compact than in the same third "The Witcher", and is packed to the brim with very different content. Story quests, chains of side tasks, small adventures, orders from "fixers", "bandit camps", collectibles-all this is enough, and the game does not hesitate to drive you through all the areas so that you do not accidentally miss something.

Night City is a huge metropolis, where there is a place for ultra-modern skyscrapers, from which streams of holographic advertising break into the sky, and semi-abandoned buildings on the outskirts of the city, where they planned to build an elite quarter. Each zone is at least slightly different from the others: if you can still confuse the Chinese and Japanese quarters, then you can hardly confuse Pacifica and Northside. In addition, the game does not keep you inside the city — if you want, you can also travel around the suburbs of Night City, where you will find hot sand from the sun and a wasteland scorched for kilometers around. Although even in such forgotten places there is something to see (and do). The main thing here is that the city feels alive. Night City is also a character in the game. Invisible and intangible, but present in every scene and imposing a certain imprint on the events that take place. The characters themselves sometimes notice that the city seems to be alive, and it turns out to feel it not only in words.

Wherever you go, there will be people everywhere (well, except for voyages in the wasteland, perhaps). Cars scurry through the streets, some crowded places like the market in the Japanese quarter are naturally crowded — in short, the game constantly tries to create a sense of presence, to show that the city is not just a static decoration. And for the most part, she does it: when you rush to some task, you always knock someone down, and then curses fly at your back. And the scene of a car chase in some quest may end quite accidentally at the moment when you and the hunted one fly together into a traffic jam at the intersection. And this is a completely random event — for certain reasons, I was forced to replay the segment with the chase, and as a result, we flew through the streets without traffic jams.

The above-mentioned meetings with bandits, the search for clues at crime scenes-all this perfectly emphasizes the "liveliness" of the city and gives it additional colors. The game honestly explains to you that crime in Night City is catastrophically high, so shooting back from bandits is a necessity for all residents. So, if you suddenly stumble into a street corner on gopnikov, you can not be particularly shy about your actions.At the same time, you are also subject to the laws of the city. You start shooting at civilians — the police will appear and clearly explain to you that you can not do this. You will provoke gang members to aggression — you will get it, and then you will have to fight off crowds of opponents from almost all over the area.Quests and leveling up
With pumping, everything is clear — you increase the levels, improve the characteristics, learn new skills. There are five stats in total (and there seems to be a secret sixth-but this is either a mockery from the developers, or I still haven't found how to open it), each of which has a specific set of abilities tied to it. For example, intelligence is responsible for hacking, engineering is responsible for crafting, and strength allows you to be healthier and beat your fists painfully.

In addition to the normal levels, there are also reputation levels, and they also increase for quests, kills, and all that. Reputation makes you more famous (which will turn out in several tasks), gives you access to new guns and implants from merchants, and it grows much faster than the usual level. For the passage of the plot and several side branches (and, of course, a certain number of "street" activities) I got 44 reputation levels out of 50 possible ones, so I won't have to grind for the coolest clothes for a long time. More precisely, you will have to — but not the reputation, but the money.

The quests are the most interesting. There are a lot of them in the game, they are diverse and many of them give a completely unique experience. And many of them are connected by a common plot and form entire arches.

Since I try very hard not to spoilerize, here is a brief description of a few side tasks. Ride a race with a sandstorm. Dive into a flooded town near Night City. A detective investigation into who killed the previous mayor of the city. An attempt to help a Buddhist monk who was "cyborgized" against his will. In half of the quests, your main weapon is not a firearm or a cold weapon, but your suspended tongue and upgraded stats for answers with skill checks. Shoot and beat the muzzle, of course, will also have to, but the dialogues in the game are just tons. And almost all of them, I must say, are very, very well written.

And, no, side chains are cool, but not everything in the game is. Also in "Cyberpunk" there are a lot of small quests-"vanshotov" (short stories for a couple of minutes), orders from fixers in the spirit of "A super-famous fixer from the USSR came to Night City — throw him a beacon", and everything in this spirit. There are also chains with fistfights, races, and a shooting championship, but similar things seem to be present in all major open-world RPGs. Well, the mandatory "fill the face with a pack of gopnik", but they do not even count as tasks — only on the map they can be seen. Result
Yes, someone probably imagined Cyberpunk 2077 a completely different game, but here the developers, I think, are not to blame. Still, to fantasize about who knows what, and then scold the developers for the fact that they did everything somehow wrong — is such a thing.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a big immersive RPG with a rich history, the coolest production and extremely charismatic characters. A game that is ready to give you more than a dozen hours of adventure in the city of the future. It may not always be perfect (at least in terms of the interface) and it doesn't always fit your personal ideas of what a cyberpunk story should look like, but it's cool nonetheless. And I no doubt gave it the maximum score precisely because the game gave me a huge amount of emotions — something similar this year was with Hades (which I also gave a "ten") and Doom Eternal.

I will be banal, but just take it and play it yourself. After all, many people probably still have a pre-order, and you are already waiting for the opportunity to break into Night City without any ratings and abstruse texts. So hold on, there are only three days left — and no postponements this time!