A far cry from what was advertised
I was expecting this to be an open world RPG, with a living breathing city, full of NPC's that lived their life, went about their day, had agency and motivations, with a crime system that adapted to the player and an intimidating always lurking police force. Megacorporations pulling invisible strings and a pulsing underworld full of runners and revolutionaries. That is not what this game is. Perhaps I was wrong to expect these things, but this was how it was advertised and the non-advertised aspects are due to it's license to the legendary pen & paper RPG cyberpunk.
This game is an FPS, with a skilltree and branching storylines. A sort of cross between GTA and Dishonored, but lacking GTA's AI, which is atleast able to drive a car and not spawn law enforcements officers right behind your back. And it lacks Dishonored's focus, polish and tightly designed levels. Yes, Cyberpunk 2077 is riddled with glitches, bugs and crashes, but that is just scratching the surface of the problems with the game. The fact that NPC glitch in and out of a path, walk through each other and get stuck in objects wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that it is ALL they do. You can't talk to them or interact with them in any meaningful way. The fact that shops and buildings are divided into a small number of categories (fast food, clothes, bars mainly) wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact that you can't do anything at those locations (outside of a quest), and the fact that the levelingsystem and skilltree are given very little context within the game until a pretty long way in wouldn't be so bad if your choices when leveling up had any meaningful impact outside of combat and hacking. Conversation choices that are unlocked because of your intelligence or cool rarely have an impact on the outcome of a conversation.
I have no doubt that what was released is not what was in CDPR's designdocument 5 years ago, but what is here now is a pretty lackluster experience.
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