Cyberpunk 2077?

Okay, I'm getting behind something solid...Something that can at least stop rotten fruit and vegetables from hitting me if thrown.

Has anyone played Cyberpunk 2077? Likes? Dislikes? I certainly have my opinion on it which is overall pretty good but I'm by no means saying that its a perfect game.

Likes:

-This game is huge! Lots of places to go and lots of places to see.
-It's over the top! Certain hand held weapons (literally one hand) can knock over telephone poles.
-I like the story of the main character, who honestly, I don't think I'm playing (kind of a bummer, I think you'd have to play it to see what I'm talking about).
-I like the NPCs in this game, especially Panam. No spoilers, but the stuff this gal carries around in her truck...She's ready for war.
-It's beautifully done. The city is vibrant, neon, and each area is a bit different from other locals. The areas outside the city are desert and pretty quiet and wide open, and provide a good contrast if you want to get out of the city for a bit.
-Cyberware and some of the hacking elements in this game are new and interesting. Cyber attacks can be used to distract or to attack opponents. I don't think I've ever seen that in other games.

Dislikes:

-From what I heard in the last seven months, the game was not really ready for release and plagued with glitches and bugs. It's been a while and I think the patches have done a pretty good job cleaning most of them up, but I still encounter some glitches and crashes. I'm using an XBox One (not a suped up new one either).
-The outside of the box says Mature 17+. That's no lie, but even I was surprised by some of the game's content and visuals. It can be pretty graphic, so definitely use caution when playing around younger family members.
-Probably a glitch, but intermittently decent and then really bad AI. Sometimes the opponents take cover, snipe, dodge, and are very aware of your presence while sneaking or in combat. Other times...not so much.
-I played on normal difficulty (haven't beaten the game yet), but I feel that with whatever build I make, I can pretty much gun down or slice through just about anybody by level 20. The levels go up to level 50 as far as I've seen. This is primarily by being able to craft armor pretty much making one bullet proof and some of the death-dealing weapons in the game seem to be very OP. I think I may change the difficulty to a hard, although with the damage some of these legendary weapons do, I'm not sure it will make much difference.
-I get the feeling that I'm not playing the main character (spoiler free and touched on a bit earlier, and if you play it, you may feel the same way).
-Gun play and melee weapons are well done. The hand to hand combat feels very awkward.
-Cars are a pain in the rear to drive (over acceleration and over compensation when turning). Motorcycles are the way to go in this game.

I haven't played it yet. I get the feeling I will eventually, but I'm waiting to see if they can bring it to a place that wouldn't be frustrating to play. After Witcher 3 (and its DLCs), I was excited to see the world that CDPR could build, what stories they could tell. Unfortunately, the state of the game's design and execution have dominated the discussion, leaving me without much to go on related to the writing.

Did you play the Witcher games? Would you say the world/story measure up to that? Did you find the various issues distracting while playing the game, or easy enough to ignore?

I played it on PC and I overall liked it. I played as a hacker / shooter game. Not a driving / melee game

I have not played Witcher 3 yet. Got it, but decided to play Cyberpunk first. Most anyone I tell that to wonders what's wrong with me. :) I've heard that Witcher's story and world are absolutely fantastic, and the detail in Cyberpunk could possibly measure up as they are quite good.

Freeze framing or not full at once pixelization of characters (waiting for the game to catch up) was noticeable in parts, but didn't really detract from playing. Every once in a while, without warning, the game would crash which was frustrating, but it was usually after a autosave and loss of time was minor. My wife may have made a deal with the XBox to crash from time to time, but it most likely was due to the game just being really big. Two discs.

Fortunately, I'll be playing on PC where a lot of the issues aren't as prominent, at least from what I've read. I always hated multi-disc games, and I'm glad to have a big, fat hard drive so I don't have to worry about that kind of thing anymore.

Witcher 3 is really in a class of its own, but only on the "soft" side of game design. The actual mechanics of gameplay are merely ok to good, in my opinion. Combat is acceptable, the leveling systems are fine. There are definitely better melee action games out there. It's the writing/story, voice acting, world design, art, sound, music....damn. The two DLCs are absolutely worth to money, and the second one in particular (Blood and Wine) is enormous.

I was truly sad to leave that beautiful, dark, twisted world. No judgment from me for your skipping it, though. I bounced off Witcher 3 twice before it finally sank its teeth into me.

Blood and Wine is basically a game on its own

This 100% I would have paid full price for Blood and Wine released as a solo game, if even just to get more Witcher haha

Witcher 3 might still be my favorite game of all time and it's been...6 years? Is that right? sheesh.

As to OP's question - I've played a fair bit of Cyberpunk on PS5. I got it at launch and it definitely had some bugs and frustrations, but the majority of which I (thankfully) didn't have issues with due to the console. The biggest issue I had was the game would crash about every 1-2 hours of playing. The fact that it still had the issues it did on PS5 just shows how ill prepared they were to release their game.

It was a shame, because I had a lot of faith in CDPR. I still have more faith in them than most game devs anymore, but their handling of that game's release was very unfortunate.

Now, I'm interested in going back to it. I finally let it hit the shelf when I was probably about 20 hours in, so I have a fair amount of play left in the game and I will probably polish it off sometime this year.

Some thoughts -

Likes:
-the voice acting is superb.

-The art design and tone of the game are precise - I can tell they were going for a particular aesthetic and I think they hit the nail on the head with that.

-The 'main character' is...uhh...nuanced and I like where they're going with their story.

- The city is HUGE and feels more alive than any in-game city I've every played around in. It doesn't seem like it at first, but it's incredibly dense and uses verticality in ways unrivaled by other games.

Dislikes:
- There's something about it though that makes me feel disassociated from the city. Like, I don't feel like I CARE about the place, or the people, all that much. I don't feel like my presence in the city matters so much. Witcher 3 was different - I felt like even if I had Geralt in the alleyways of Novigrad killing some random npc's, it mattered. Every minor side quest felt like I was deepening my understanding of the world and having an impact. For some reason this hasn't struck me in Cyberpunk.

- Shooting and driving both feel floaty to me. Driving especially doesn't really feel fun. Part of that is the aforementioned verticality. Sometimes its a bit of a puzzle figuring out how to get to a location that requires finding the right ramp/road to go up or down.

- Braindances. These are things that let you relive another person's memory as if you were really there. They are a neat puzzle/investigative element in the game. They're unique and I like them. The game goes out of its way to highlight them in the beginning, but they only pop up every once in a while at set story points. They're a missed opportunity. CDPR could have included some as collectables or purchasable items that let you experience interesting character moments through the eyes of others to help immersion. Instead they're only a narrative tool.

- Loot feels similar to Borderlands in that I constantly find new stuff that is mostly garbage. It's more annoying than anything and I don't really get all that excited about drops.

All in all, I look forward to going back to it at some point, especially now that many of the issues/bugs are surely fixed.