Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 should not have been released in the condition it was in during 2020. The bugs, crashes, broken systems, and terrible performance on older consoles were not minor problems. CD Projekt Red spent years rebuilding the game, and the work paid off. It does not change what people originally bought. The current version is the game I wanted Night City to contain. Choosing between Corpo, Nomad, and Streetkid initially suggests three very different lives for V. Each path gets its own introduction, some dialogue choices, and occasional shortcuts during missions. Once Jackie enters the picture, those paths quickly merge. V becomes the same mercenary working toward the same Konpeki Plaza heist, regardless of where the story began. That is disappointing, but Jackie makes the opening work. The short time spent building V’s reputation with him gives the heist something to lose. When it collapses, Jackie is dead, V has been shot, and a damaged biochip is reconstructing Johnny Silverhand inside V’s head. The game stops being about reaching the top of Night City and becomes a search for any way to stay alive. Johnny is difficult to like at first. He is angry, selfish, and usually convinced that his hatred of corporations settles every argument. Spending more time with him reveals where that anger came from without excusing everything he did. His relationship with V can become hostile, respectful, or something between the two, and those changes make later conversations feel earned. Night City keeps that story from feeling like a straight trip between missions. I often drove instead of using fast travel because the districts change so much from one another. Corporate towers stand over crowded markets. Pacifica is filled with abandoned projects. Santo Domingo is wrapped around factories and power infrastructure, while the Badlands show how quickly the city ends once there is no money left to extract. The radio helps. I would leave a vehicle running outside a destination because a song had not finished, then spend another few minutes taking a longer road to the next job. The advertising, traffic, police scanners, phone calls, and constant noise make Night City convincing while moving through it. Stopping to inspect the illusion exposes its limits. Most buildings are closed, pedestrians have little to say, and many stores exist only as scenery. V can become one of the most dangerous mercenaries in the city without the average person responding any differently. Night City feels busy, but it does not always feel aware. The jobs inside it are where Cyberpunk earns the 9.0. A mission might begin with cameras and quickhacks, fall apart when a body is discovered, and finish with V escaping through a side door while half the building is searching the wrong floor. The environments usually provide several entrances, and enough abilities support stealth, hacking, or direct combat to make those choices matter. The rebuilt perks and cyberware make V’s progression much better than it was at launch. Netrunners can spread quickhacks through groups and attack without entering a room. Reflex builds move quickly with blades or submachine guns. A Sandevistan can slow the world long enough to clear several enemies before they react. Shotguns, throwing knives, smart weapons, gorilla arms, and precision rifles each support a recognizable style. Some builds become too strong for the enemies trying to stop them. Quickhacks can dismantle a room from safety, and a fully developed Sandevistan makes regular guards nearly irrelevant. I still enjoyed becoming overpowered because the game gives V entertaining ways to be dangerous. The enemy AI simply does not keep pace with all of them. The smaller stories kept me invested after the combat stopped being difficult. Judy, Panam, Takemura, River, Kerry, Rogue, and the people around them are allowed to exist outside shootouts. Conversations in cars, apartments, bars, and abandoned buildings often carry more weight than the large action scenes. Side jobs deal with exploitation, grief, artificial intelligence, faith, politics, and what people are willing to surrender for another chance. The decisions do not always reshape the city, but they can permanently change a relationship or decide whether someone survives. They also give V opportunities to become more than the personality selected during dialogue. The weaker activities are easier to identify after several hours. Reported crimes and assaults repeat the same pattern of arriving, killing a group, and collecting evidence. Gigs have more context but eventually reuse familiar locations and objectives. There is plenty to do, though not all of it deserves equal attention. Phantom Liberty adds the strongest stretch of the game. Dogtown is tighter and more dangerous than the rest of Night City, and its story places V between Reed, Songbird, President Myers, and people who rarely tell the entire truth. Reed’s loyalty has consumed most of his life. Songbird understands exactly what V is going through and uses that connection when she needs help. I changed my mind about both of them as the story progressed. The final decisions are difficult because each person has already given V a reason to trust and doubt them. The expansion also adds another possible ending for V, and it treats survival as something that can be achieved without feeling like a victory. Technical problems have not completely disappeared. Characters still clip through objects, traffic behaves strangely, and animations occasionally break during conversations. Driving is better, although some cars remain loose enough that motorcycles are easier to trust. The current versions perform well on appropriate hardware, but the game can still show the damage left by its complicated development. Cyberpunk 2077 became an excellent RPG because the characters and missions eventually lived up to the setting built around them. Night City is not the fully reactive world people expected before launch, and the game never became everything CD Projekt Red advertised. I stopped needing it to be once V’s story and the people involved gave me a reason to stay. I would recommend it now without hesitation, especially with Phantom Liberty. I would also warn anyone buying it that the game took years of paid public failure to reach this point. The finished experience is worth playing. The way it arrived is still worth remembering.