Due to having children and having to work normal hours I decided the first time I’d play Cyberpunk 2077 would be very early in on the morning after it came out. I got up at 4AM to play. Here are my impressions after about three hours.

  • I like that there are no sliders in the character creator is. I find it much easier to make something that looks like a person. But I wish there were more presets to start from.
  • The intro for Corp is good and definitely gets the idea of a Corp across–ruthless, not considering consequences. It ends abruptly though and I wonder if a mission was cut. There’s so much set up that leads to nothing.
  • For some reason I had no idea the game would be an RPG. I really am not a fan of FPS RPGs. I’m thinking I’ll focus on the melee combat.
  • The big skill tree is intimidating and I have no idea what is fun. The intro would have been better if it introduced the mechanics before metroiding you. As is, I don’t really know why you need to hack things. It doesn’t seem useful. Maybe I just haven’t gotten far enough.
  • It’s annoying that all NPCs seem to only say some version of “Are you lost?” or “Get lost!”.

What’s the fun so far?

  • Seeing all the NPCs, lots of interesting variation.
  • The set dressings and environments are crazily detailed. The good version of Bloodborne clutter–there’s stuff everywhere, but it makes sense.
  • Fun world building with TV shows in elevators.

Second Play Session

The combat is not fun yet. I’m playing on hard mode. I’ve got a shotgun and I run up to people and shoot them in the face. This works for most battles. I probably need to try exploring more of the hacking stuff.

If you don’t role play during story missions, things can get very weird and dumb. NPCs will repeat dialog over and over trying to get you to do things, while you ransack their stuff. It is an RPG, maybe I should role play!

There is so, so, so much text in this game. I didn’t mind reading a ton of stuff when I played Control. I liked reading stuff in Control. That was a great part of the game. I’ve not really read any of the stuff in Cyberpunk 2077. But I think reading stuff might be an important part of the game as there’s not a huge amount of ambient worldbuilding. I’m playing on the PS4 which is in my living room and I think this is a problem. I played Control at my desk. Reading on a screen at a desk is normal. Reading on a screen from 10 feet away on a couch is not, and so I’ve skipped most of the world building text.