Overview:

It’s the year 2077 and everything looks like what a person born in the 70s thought the future of the 80s would look like.  People have robotic enhancements to, what seems like, every part of their body and there are neon lights covering grimy environments.  There aren’t flying cars, though, so that sucks.  Everyone also talks with the ‘tude so you know they mean business.  Music also is stuck, perpetually, in the 80s vibe so you got that going for you.  With that said, you take the role of a guy/gal/whatever and traverse Night City [and surroundings] doing quests all from the first person view!  

Visuals:

The game can look very pretty when everything is clicking and the people aren’t getting in the way.  There are some occasional jarring moments which took me out of the world but they were few and far between.  Like I said, everything has a lived in look which means there is trash and grime everywhere but that’s the mood.  The character models look ok as long as you don’t look too closely.  Personally, I thought Johnny Silverhand looked rough considering he’s supposed to be front and center.

Audio:

I’m kind of torn by the audio of the game.  I love synthesizers and crazy digital sounds in movies or just media in general but I feel like this is just trying too hard to meet that style.  It just seems like it’s in your face about it and is like “See!  Look how 80s we are!” and that’s always the worst kind.  The voice acting is good but, again, everyone just is trying way too hard to be edgelords. It comes off rather pathetic.

Completion:

When everything comes together I just couldn’t play the game anymore.  I put probably 7 hours into it and it just was boring.  The combat, the story, and the world were just bland and dull even though it was technically sound.  I just couldn’t care less about what was happening.  The sandbox portion of it isn’t even particularly good because the AI is extremely dumb that even if you kill a cop, you kill enough of them and they’ll stop caring.  I just couldn’t take anymore of it once the luster wore off.

Update: 12/11/2025

I FINISHED THIS GAME! I don’t know why I wanted to finish it but I felt I had to. My ending, apparently, is the quick ending in which my dude decided to take the easy way out. It was kind of a beautiful little ending and, even though I could reload a save and do the correct ending, I decided to make it permanent and stop it there.