At first, I was sticking up for CDProjectRed - I had only played up to the beginning of Act 2 at that time, and I thought the bugs had been few and far between, and when they occurred, they weren't really immersion breaking for me, so I thought it was a lot of fuss over nothing...
I'm getting closer to the end game now, and wow... I take it back - This game is riddled with bugs. I've had entire levels/cutscenes completely ruined - Sometimes the story makes no sense whatsoever due to a bug occurring, so I need to check YouTube to try and piece together what the hell is going on!
A common theme is that the game gets buggier as you progress through the main storyline. Sometimes the story makes no sense due to the very rushed and disorganised way the game was made, even when it isn't bugged.
The way things work in general seems so backwards sometimes - For example, I accidently bought a sniper rifle by clicking it, so I figured you just click it again in the inventory to return it and get my money back? Nope. You sell it back at maybe 5% of the price you bought it for... ¬_¬'
I think it's debateable whether that's wrong. You're buying and selling on an unregulated market in a brutal, dystopian hellhole. A lot of the stuff would have been stolen in one way or another. Some of the stuff would have been looted off a corpse after killing the previous owner (who was probably a serial killer). Especially from you, since you're a merc. The rule of law is highly uncertain at best, so the merchant's main protection is killing anyone who tries to rob them, either directly or via a gang they're part of or paying protection money to. No questions are asked. No guarantees are given. You bought it, it's yours. Transaction over. No questions asked. No returns. If you sell it, you get the black market fence offer. If you don't like the offer, hard luck. This is Night City, choom.
Having said that, I think a "sell back" option
while you still have the trade window open would be reasonable. It's done that way for buying back items you sold to the merchant.
I think merchants are yet another area that needed a lot more work. There should have been some form of merchant reputation system, with various things feeding into it. If you're a repeat customer, you should get a better percentage than some random stranger. You're a reliable source of income for them. Your reputation with gangs should feed into it too, for good and bad. If a merchant is paying protection money to a gang that hates you, that merchant should be wary about doing business with you at all, let alone giving you a good price. Etc.
There are plenty of things that are done more obviously badly. Pretty much all of crafting, for example. Pressing and holding a button 5000 times is not fun. Or any good for your finger. That's not hyperbole - if you make a crafting-orientated character, 5000 seperate one-item crafts isn't a particularly large amount. That would get you enough legendary crafting components to make a start on your real crafting. I edited a config file to change it from press and hold to just press, but it's still thousands of presses. Then there's smaller bad UI details, such as not being allowed to see how many bullets you have when you're crafting bullets and any excess crafted bullets magically disappearing. You make the bullets, using up the materials, but the bullets magically disappear once you've hit the (unstated, of course) bullet limit for that type. 500 for pistol rounds, 700 for rifle rounds, etc.
It's such a shame - So many small bugs and silly things have ruined it for me now. I don't even think the story is that good, but I'll push through to see how it ends.
It ends annoyingly, for two reasons:
i) Lots of pretend-interactive custscenes, which is a "feature" of Cyberpunk 2077. Combining the worst of both worlds, you're forced to press required buttons at required times to progress in a cutscene. Very slowly.
ii) Lack of player choice, even amongst the options that are written into the game. For example, say you want to storm Arasaka tower alone (written into the game as the first section of an ending) and then leave NC with the Aldeceros (written into the game as the second section of an ending)? No. Not allowed. You can only leave NC with the Aldeceros if you pointlessly put them all at risk and get some of them killed. Which you have no choice about - their deaths are scripted, so to hell with the player.
Oh, and one of the endings is only obtainable if you did certain unexplained things during the game and if you go AFK for several minutes at a certain unexplained point during the game. Because reasons.
Fortunately, it's not all completely bad - I do enjoy the gunplay and ziping around a site ripping people to pieces
The music is sooo good and works really well - And the city design and general look and feel is incredible, and was exactly what I was after in a "Cyberpunk" game.
I can only hope that the DLC they have planned is going to improve on it, because I'm still really excited to see more Cyberpunk type stories!
Same here. But I think what's missing is too fundamental to be fixed with DLC. I'm hoping that in a couple of years they finish making the game and release the finished game with a new story as a sequel.
EDIT: A random thought - I think that the repeated, forced and very long unskippable pretend-interactive cutscenes are a significant factor in the relatively small amount of replay that the game gets. Open-world games with multiple skill trees usually get more replay than CP2077 gets. I'm doing a replay with a new character at the moment and I spent about 15 hours deliberately not doing the main story at all because it's all unskippable pretend-interactive cutscene. At least half an hour of it, probably more. All the way from the beginning of the heist to the third time you regain consciousness, back in your apartment when the game
finally allows you to start playing again. It certainly feels like a lot more than half an hour. It's irritating and gets far more irritating with repetition. And it's stupidly forced. Why isn't Jackie allowed to use a maxdoc or bounceback? Why is Delemain hard coded to have passengers they're protecting die rather than taking them to a ripperdoc?
I managed to endure it for a second time by being slightly drunk, turning the sound off and listening to an audiobook instead. It's anti-fun. It's worse than an unskippable 45 minute cutscene. And you have to endure it with every playthrough. I've no doubt that severely reduces the replay value of the game.
