Revisiting Cyberpunk 2077: Is It Finally Worth Playing?

I remember the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 like it was yesterday. Oh, the storm that came of that! Not since No Man’s Sky had I seen so much outrage over a game’s launch.

Frustrating though it may be, video game launches are always going to be a coinflip these days. Who needs to ship a game in a complete state when you can just patch it later? The problem has gotten so bad that a game launching in a polished state is considered a rare thing these days.

But that’s just how it is. Games don’t come out until a few years after they actually launch. So, now that it’s been a few years, is Cyberpunk 2077 finally worth playing? Have they fixed it?

Meh. Kind of.

After a job goes wrong and their best friend dies, your player character, V, finds themselves sharing their head with Johnny Silverhand, a long dead legend of Night City. Just one problem: the tech that put him there is killing V. Now, you must go on an epic adventure through Night City to find a cure and save yourself from certain death.

The story here is… fine. A crazy cyber ghost, a ticking time bomb, underworld crime syndicates, it all makes for a pretty intriguing story. The threat of imminent death is somewhat undercut by being able to wander off for however long you want and screw around, but don’t worry about that.

My main issue is that I really don’t feel any motivation to move forward in the plot. It isn’t just that the other content is more interesting, I actively look for things to do other than the main story. All the gameplay sections related to plot progression just aren’t that interesting.

Honestly, I much prefer the side quests to the main story. It’s far more fun to help prostitutes unionize or to serve as a taxi service for a guy with a grenade for a nose. It reached the point where the main story was just something I did while I waited for more of the side plots to progress.

As for the characters, they’re… meh. They’re alright. Some of the things they say can be kind of weird, like how Panam, the rough and wild mechanic with a rebellious streak, speaks in grammar so stiff and proper it sounds robotic. Still, in terms of personality and depth, the cast is pretty good.

Also, you get to hang out with Keanu Reeves. If that ain’t a win, nothing is.

Graphically speaking, this game is impressive. At least, when it works properly, it is. The amount of detail in the environments is genuinely insane, and the character models are pretty high fidelity too. And the weather effects are *chef’s kiss* beautiful. Oh, and the music is pretty killer.

Consistency is not in this game’s vocabulary. The frame rate rises and falls on a whim, weather effects sometimes overstay their welcome, and cutscenes had a tendency to spaz out. My personal favorite was the opening scene, wherein Jackie walked away with a headless V, both of them T-posing.

Still, it isn’t nearly as bad as it was back at launch. Nine times out of ten, it functions as it was supposed to. And the glitches are more funny than game-breaking.

But how about the gameplay? Is Cyberpunk 2077 actually fun to play?

Yeah, kind of.

As an RPG, this game gives you a surprising amount of freedom to customize your character. Sure, modifying the size of your shlong is funny. But putting robot blades in your arms or building a roster of deadly hacking options? That’s actually really cool.

Your customization options also go into the dialogue. Whether you’re building a strong bruiser, a clever hacker, or a silver-tongued gunslinger, each tree opens up new dialogue options in any given situation. This gives each scenario a surprising amount of variety. Do you go in guns blazing? Sneak about? Talk your way through? Those are all viable options, depending on where you put your points.

Unfortunately, some are clearly more viable than others. I went for a stealth build, but quickly realized that it was far more efficient – and just flat out more fun – to go in gun’s blazing and kill everything. I found far more windows and doors that I needed strength to force open, so all the points I put into hacking quickly proved useless. It feels like the game was designed with one playstyle in mind, and the others were added in almost as an afterthought.

I can say the same about quite a few gameplay mechanics. Crafting feels half-baked and unnecessary. The driving just feels like a less interesting GTA. You can technically go on a GTA style rampage, stars and everything, but the chases don’t last long and they aren’t half so engaging. Cyberpunk does fairly well as an RPG, but all the other gameplay types it tries end up feeling shallow and quickly go stale.

All in all, Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t a bad game. It certainly functions better than it used to, and the story isn’t bad. But the game still has plenty of rough patches, even now.

Still, the future looks bright. A new expansion is coming out for the game soon, and apparently it revamps just about everything. Maybe after that drops, Cyberpunk 2077 will finally be the game we all had hoped it would be when it first came out.

But let’s not let the shiny updates or awesome anime adaptations trick us into forgetting about its disastrous launch. The moment we forget is the moment the developers will pull the same trick twice.

Although other developers will certainly never stop. Unfinished game launches are gonna plague the game’s industry for… well, probably forever, now.