Recent reviews by Marco the Fallen

A fun game to delve into with friends and practice having heart attacks solo.

Good luck.

The game becomes too boring too quickly considering the original.
As of any game of the genre, combat makes or breaks the experience and you might feel it being too repetitive after a few minutes.
Story doesn't take it itself seriously (so why should you?) and the quips keep taking you out of it. Being immune and combat revolving around it also ruined the feeling of disaster.
And as most things coming out lately, too woke, as you'll see from character creation, dialogues and cutscenes.

The second game I've ever refunded.

The amount of random bull* the game puts you through is absurd. Losing long-life characters to random noises, bite locations being defined by defense chances/preferences (always the goddang hands!) and ghost strikes is just disappointing. Make no mistake, as a compliment, you'll rarely see another game with similar risk/reward structures but these games work when you know things are reacting to you the same way you react to them.
The more I read about how the gameplay works from different sources, it seems pointless to expect new ways to deal with the chaos.
Playing with mods that change gameplay end up saving you (somewhat?) from going mad but hell, you might have to suffer to new ones too; Also, having to know you'll probably wait 100 years for a full release might be a little bit too much.

It keeps getting worse.

They made it worse, unfun and even more RNG-crazed/guide-required.

Boring long runs (same enemies, same events) and no real progression (nothing that makes a difference, anyways), specially compared to the first game. I enjoyed it for a while but I got to the point where everyone complains about. No point unlocking things and in most boss fights deaths happen and wipes are expected.

I guess Overconfidence really sucks, Red Hook.

A great successor to the first game and while it's still in development, it already brings crazy fun with the exploration, combat, building aspect and playing with friends.

Made a long review for the main game after the updates and extra content, but decided to do a short one for the expansion itself after getting all the achievements.

I had some hope but it was a disappointment overall, just as the main game.

A few nice gigs but you get railroaded all the time in the main missions (and side missions, which people praise for the multiple choices, even though they are clearly defined by a better outcome if you follow a certain moral compass). The endings were horrible and just another proof CDPR sucks in a telling a story without having to be depressive for depression's sake (eventually gave up on Witcher 3 even). And please don't use the "Cyberpunk is meant to be dark, edgy and gritty" because it's just non-sense and annoying. Just gave up on future games from the company.

After all this time and just after getting all the achievements, long story short: the game's still not worth the experience even with 2.0 and the expansion.

What can I say? When it was released, with the whole bug controversy, I had decided to postpone buying it until it was fixed or at least with the things the company had promised the game would have. Meanwhile, I heard a few things about the story, saw some memes but spent most of the time indifferent to it. Almost three years later, heard the game was getting an expansion and an overhaul of sorts. Got excited (my mistake?) and bought the whole package pre-release but waited until the expansion arrived to start playing (after 2.0). Well, I even watched the Netflix show.

Spoilers ahead:
Started the game, a bit annoyed with the intro (as a CORPO V) and consequent time skip to tell a story about intimacy but sure, here we go. Act I started and holy hell, each mission was nice, preparing the main heist, some of the missions and mechanics from the trailers, getting to know the characters and world, I delayed progression the most I could by clearing Watson of gigs and NCPD missions before going to the heist itself (since you are limited to that district during it). A few bugs here and there but reloading the game usually helped. I was excited about what could happen, loving being a mercenary in a city full of possibilities and wondering how it took me so long to start playing the game...

And then ACT 2 happened. Hell, what a mess. Couldn't believe what a mess they put themselves into. Got annoyed from the big story change (the unlikeable Johnny reveal), decided to focus on side missions and completing the map before going to the main missions again. It was another game. A bad one. The charm from the first act was gone and I could see that all the missions you were forced to be railroaded into things (f*** Sinnerman and a few other missions) and there was no RPG aspect from it. And there was the terrible ludonarrative dissonance of getting sicker in the cutscenes but being a killing machine gameplay-wise. All the characters you meet (or the majority, maybe) are literal bastards (Johnny, Alt, Judy, Panam, Songbird, etc.) and there is no way to behave properly (even though they claimed it was an RPG) because the game actually punishes you for it. From what I read researching about it, after Keanu Reeves got involved, they moved all the game around to focus on him, sacrificing all the possibilities for it and now I can only wonder about the possibilities we were denied. As I've progressed (and figuring it was only going to get worse before I got to the 100% achievements I wanted, which required all endings), read about the game and got even more frustrated about the game endings. Apparently the excuse people give that is that the Cyberpunk genre is supposed to be bleak, edgy and gritty which is just non-sense, considering other games and stories. Also, go live in a dark cave then. Or bite a gun. In the game, of course (awesome ending). Apparently it's something that even CDPR is proud of, maybe a tradition of being depressive for depression's sake. I guess this monotony combined with railroading was what made me never finish Witcher 3 and what will probably make me never buy any of their games again. Not even getting into the main leftist stuff, most of them from the original lore but brought to 11 again to make "current times" arguments.

All those things and the recent announcement there won't be any other expansions and DLCs (there were promised) as well as other content that were mentioned during production, the bugs during launch and weird open-world they created (and abandoned as you go through the story) is clearly a waste. It didn't get to the point of what was expected, which wasn't much, considering the promises. No RPG per se (just a skill tree isn't it, fellas), only a few choices that change things (which get you to the terrible endings doesn't matter what you do), weird combat, driving is like moving in a soapy floor. I won't deny you get to have a few epic situations sometimes, though: yes, Sandevistan, netrunning, jumping between buildings, a few cutscenes, etc. BTW, screw them making the reasonable ending secret locked to specific lines of dialogue in a side mission, thankfully no achievs!)

Even Phantom Liberty which added a few nice gigs and the whole spy thriller stuff suffered from horrible character design and railroading you through main missions (and even side missions, even though people praise the "multiple choices" that clearly have a better outcome to a limited moral guideline).

An extra disappointment to mention here, just because I was annoyed by it: I hated the soundtrack, with a passion. If I got into a car, had to turn off the radio or tune to the jazz station (<3 Chet Baker). If I got to a mission or area where there was a radio playing, had to go out of my way to turn it off, even in stealth missions. Full of aggressive or annoying noises, pseudopunk, crappy EDM and other weird pop genres. To my surprise, after researching about it, the developers made the sad decision to stay away from synthwave or other expected genres because it would be "out of fashion" from the gritty world they were creating. Oh crap. It usually had a few great moments with their original score.

They really messed up with the whole CSGO thing.
Never mess with someone's achievements. Ha

Still bugged and full of cheaters.

The most boring game ever.