Unfinished, unready for release
After spending the first 24 hours of the game's release trying to rebind controls through .xml editing, solve performance issues and graphical glitches, and get to grips with the game - while reading and responding to threads by other gamers, especially those who suffer disabilities, having far worse problems than mine, I was still feeling somewhat optimistic, or at least somewhat forgiving.
But as I sit down at the end of my second night with Cyberpunk 2077, I'm struck by the total absence of the most basic features such as the ability to control your movement speed, or the speed of your vehicle while using a mouse and keyboard... Or the ability to change something as simple as your character's hair colour let alone the more advanced aesthetic choices considered core to the original setting (Rule 1: Style over Substance).
I'm past the point of being able to overlook and forgive 'teething problems'.
This isn't 'teething problems' - the more I play, the more I realised Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't finished, it simply had a significant number of features cut.
Optimistically, we'll see these features added in free patches, as has been CDPR's standard ever since the first Witcher, but as a pre-order customer, I expected a buggy mess with a good game at the core - not a buggy mess with 85% of an unfinished game at its core.
The total neglect of the disabled demographic, of left-handed gamers, and of anyone who prefers to customise their controls looks a lot more ugly when placed in this context.
Of course Cyberpunk 2077 had to be released during 2020. Poetic. They've made some pretty grave gameplay sacrifices in order to meet that goal, though.
If you're on the fence; wait.
Do not buy early, and consider waiting for a sale until you hear the game has met the basic standards for a AAA open-world RPG in terms of player-choice, freedom of expression, UI/UX, accessibility, and performance.
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