Recent reviews by Vetinari

Leans on the chill side of things, for better and worse.

Its like someone streamlined away everything I didn't like about factorio. Might be the best factory builder to date.

Good game, but just too damn repetitive for how long it is. Its a slog. You can also get completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥ by bad event RNG. I'm not saying you *will*, but it can happen.

I don't regret buying or playing it, but I don't exactly recommend it, either.

Played this on the Epic Games store before. This could be one of the best video games of all time.

A year later this game is still genuinely bad for reasons that can not be fixed with simple patches

This is a coop game with absolutely terrible netcode, what the actual ♥♥♥♥

Most important thing first: This game runs like ♥♥♥♥. Unless you have a seriously beefy PC this should be your main reason not to play it right now.
And it doesn't even look *that* great. If you turn everything on max, including raytracing (tested on geforce now, do not recommend), the game looks good in daylight, but not breathtaking. The one time true next gen feeling comes up is with raytracing, in the rain, at night. It genuinely looks like in the trailers, but its not worth the overall performance hit.

The other main reasons not to play right now are jank and lack of polish.
Jank: The game is full of minor bugs. I haven't had any gamebreaking ones, and if you make sure to update your drivers you can get rid of most of the visual ones, but they are still clearly there.
Lack of polish: There is a plethora of missing features, either from what you expect in the trailers or what you expect from a open world game in 2020. There are little to no side activities; there is no way to customize your character after you create it (not even a haircut; in a game where body modification is a major theme); there is no way to use a transit system or a taxi; there is clearly no driver AI; there are important missing keybinds, like "press to ADS" as opposed to "hold to ADS"; the lifepaths are short; there is no point to crafting, as you constantly find new, better guns; the guns feel great, but the enemies are bullet spongy; if you commit a crime police spawn in like watson from that one sherlock holmes game, and don't chase you; vehicles control like tanks.

However, if you approach the game on its own terms, it becomes clear there is one, and only one thing, it is really interested in: The story of V, their environment, and night city; and how the relate to each other. And they're ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amazing. The environment design blew me away, the city is a lovingly created world that immersed me like few have. The characters are the right amount of crazy to fit in this world and be entertaining while still being relatable. The whole game is carried by top notch writing and voice acting. It respects you as a player by not dumping endless exposition or filler onto you, instead expecting you to follow along and think for yourself.
Here is one weakness of the writing: While the game presents a lot of the genre typical ethical questions and conundrums, it rarely *does* anything with them, at most going "isn't that ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up?" instead of arriving at an actual conclusion to these questions, leaving that to the player.

Ultimately, if you bought into the hype, don't get this game. At least not yet. Don't get this if you are expecting a futuristic GTA competitor in rockstar's style, because it is not. But if you're looking for, well, a good *cyberpunk* game? You HAVE to play this. Just give it a while until it has been patched up a bit.

Very clearly still a tech demo, but damn, that is some cool tech.