IS IT PLAYABLE?
Let me guess: you want to know what state Cyberpunk 2077 is in after more than a year of patches and hotfixes. Its late-2020 release was infamous—riddled with bugs, plagued by performance issues, and borderline unplayable on last-gen consoles. Sony even removed it from the PlayStation Store. So where does that leave the game today? Is it playable? Is it worth your time?
The short answer is: far enough, yes, and yes—but with serious reservations. In its current form, Cyberpunk 2077 is a two-faced beast. If you want a tightly directed, cinematic first-person experience set in a dystopian megacity of crime, greed, and human decay, go ahead. But if you expect a living, reactive open-world sandbox—one that rewards exploration and systemic play—you’re in for disappointment. Beneath the spectacle, the city is hollow.
From a visual and narrative standpoint, I have few complaints. Night City is the main attraction, and behind its electrified neon surface lies a grim vision of humanity. Corporate elites exploit consumer addiction, gangs fight over scraps, and nomads in the wastelands struggle to escape a rigged system. Drugs, cybernetic implants, and software offer temporary relief from despair. Braindances let you inhabit another person’s body to escape reality—unless faulty black-market hardware fries your brain and makes that escape permanent.
All of this is conveyed through an excellent main storyline. I played the PS4 version on a PS5, and performance-wise the game is now patched to a point where its strengths finally outweigh its flaws. I encountered no fatal bugs, no broken quests, and no crashes. Minor graphical glitches still occurred, but given that the story itself revolves around malfunctioning cyberware distorting perception, they felt oddly thematically appropriate.
You play as V, a mercenary with one of three possible backgrounds. I chose a female street kid, voiced superbly by Cherami Leigh, who captures the vulnerability beneath V’s hardened exterior. The writing, voice acting, and direction are consistently strong. Dialogues—both in main and side quests—are presented entirely in immersive first-person, with excellent motion capture and facial animation. The cast of characters is memorable, and their insecurities and ambitions emerge naturally through sharp, jargon-laden conversations.
Jackie Welles, Johnny Silverhand, and Judy Alvarez stand out in particular. Johnny, portrayed by Keanu Reeves, plays a far larger and more interesting role than expected, while Judy’s romance arc unfolds with emotional nuance rarely seen in games. These characters all dream of immortality in one form or another, and watching tough, guarded people slowly open up—right in your face, without cinematic distancing—is one of the game’s greatest achievements.
Another highlight is the braindance mechanic, where V relives recorded memories to solve crimes. These detective-like segments aren’t challenging, but they add texture and humanity to Night City’s tragedies, giving a voice to its most forgotten victims.
For fans of story-driven RPGs, this alone justifies a playthrough.
The gameplay, however, is merely competent. Combat is serviceable and occasionally fun, but on normal difficulty it borders on trivial. Healing items are so abundant that death rarely feels like a real threat. Encounters are theoretically flexible—you can hack, sneak, or brute-force your way through—but visual clutter and a busy interface make situational awareness difficult. Useful elements like cameras, mines, and turrets drown in noise.
Stealth, in particular, feels like an afterthought. It demands constant menu navigation clearly designed for mouse input and awkwardly ported to consoles. Crafting is similarly undercooked: by the time you can craft anything meaningful, you’ve already looted something better. Hacking suffers from the same issue—it’s clunky, limited, and often unnecessary, especially since using it frequently alerts enemies anyway.
And now to the real problem: the open world.
Night City is stunning to look at but shockingly lifeless. Outside of marked quests, almost nothing happens. There are no meaningful chance encounters, no hidden questlines worth discovering, no sense of emergent systems colliding. Pedestrians wander aimlessly. Shops sell items you’ll soon discard. From afar, the city appears alive with traffic—but as you approach, cars simply vanish.
Driving, despite the game’s obsession with vehicles and their lore, is dull. Apart from a handful of scripted sequences, cars exist only to ferry you between quest markers—usually slower than fast travel. The wastelands beyond the city are even worse: vast, empty stretches where environmental geometry barely holds together. I clipped through piles of junk in a massive scrapyard that existed purely as visual filler.
This emptiness infects the side content as well. Most minor jobs are pre-marked on the map and blend together into repetitive errands. Kill someone. Steal something. Sabotage something. Leave. Leveling up only increases numbers—damage, cooldowns, stealth thresholds—without meaningfully changing how you play.
In The Witcher 3, CD Projekt Red enriched the world by telling powerful micro-stories in every hut and backwater. Cyberpunk 2077 tries to replicate this through scattered dialogue transcripts, but they are largely interchangeable and drowned out by visual noise. Any subtle environmental storytelling struggles to surface.
And yet—I can’t deny how breathtaking the city is. Neon reflections, towering megacorporations, obscene advertisements—every screenshot looks like a curated loading screen. Night City deserves a place among the most visually striking locations in games.
Had I stuck strictly to the main quest and its best side stories, I might have rated this much higher. When narrative and presentation take the lead, Cyberpunk 2077 becomes a gripping cinematic ride. But the moment you step away from that guided path and expect the world to carry itself, the illusion collapses.
With the upcoming native PS5 and Xbox Series releases, CD Projekt Red has a rare second chance. If they manage to breathe real life into Night City, I might return for an updated verdict. Until then, Cyberpunk 2077 remains a spectacular façade—brilliant to look at, compelling to listen to, but largely empty once you start poking beneath the surface.
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