Recent reviews by XDDC

Cute game, really.

Platforming is clunky sometimes, but the Story more than makes up for it.

And i'ts free.

NOT ONLY did Ubisoft shut down the Servers
Noooo....
They had to also revoke the licence for this Game on any Uplay Account, effectively hindering you to start the Game EVEN IF someone were to create Private Server Software!

Yeah, no. thats shady as F.

Step 1: Buy with all of your friends
Step 2: Mod it so more than 2 players can play
Step 3: Absolutely piss yourself laughing
Step 4: Profit

is ok

Whoo boy. what a short, but painful ride.

1. The Game Launcher.
This game uses a third party game launcher, and of course that counts as regular game time, making a refund request not an automated one but rather needing to be manually reviewed by steam, not the biggest issue but one that annoys me still

but now to the issues i have with the actual game itself.

After finally making it through the download, the game forst made me wait quite a long while to even register that i actually have purchased it, even did their steps of linking my steam account through their website, etc. but i got in eventually, but the fun didnt end there
Crashes, Crashes and again, Crashes, the game crashed multiple times, even after verifying the game throuhg their launcher. But eventually it got through that even.
so, navigating through the menus, setting my settings, all fine and dandy, until i actually wanted to play "something went wrong" , so i tried again ... "something went wrong" oh gee thanks...
after trying THAT multiple times, i eventually got put in a lobby (seeing a pattern yet?)
so i waited... and waited ... and waited... and about 15 minutes later, the lobby still didnt start, so backing out and trying again (obviously after a new round of "something went wrong") and yay, it got me into a full lobby and yay, the map actually starts to load, finally gonna dip my toes into the actual gameplay and if thats good, i could forgive a bit of the earlier issues aaaaand... it crashed me back into the main menu without a word... alright, trying to find a new lobby, yay, back in a half full lobby that made me wait another 10 minutes...

well, and at that point i was frustrated so f it, steam refund request and trying to uninstall... but wait, theres more, cause obviously the game doesnt let you uninstall it so easily because uninstalling the game through steam just deletes the launcher, not the game files, not the anticheat, not cleaning up the reg files.
hey they got an uninstall script in the game folder, lets try that aand ... it doesnt do anything...
great. manually deleting the game files and having to live with the anticheat being just ... there...

i hope my refund request goes through smoothly, this wasnt a pleasurable experience at all

cute, fun, free, what more do you need

I'm Sorry. Genuinely.

i WANT to love this game, i really do.
I love cyberpunk as a genre, i loved most of the deus ex games for example, but cyberpunk 2077 just didnt make me feel as immersed into the world as it should/could have. Tons of bugs every few minutes didnt help. i didnt encounter too many gamebreaking bugs (ah well, i couldnt do one of the major questlines, jonnys, because he just never showed up where he was supposed to for it. that'd be a gamebreaking bug, but i guess the gamebreaking ones would be mostly fixed by now.) but tons of minor to medium glitches that just throw you out whenever the game at least became somewhat immersive. glitched phonecalls without sound, phonecalls stacking, textures plopping in literally a meter in front of you, npcs despawning and spawning in your face, T-poses... you get the drift.
While yes, my system is barely powerful enough to run the game, it shouldnt be this much of a glitchy mess. and all of the issues i got i have also seen other people have in videoy online running on WAY more powerful hardware, so theres that.
The updates... well, its been over half a year now that this game released, and what we got with updates just wasnt all that major. yes, you fixed a lot of the real gamebraking things, you made the game more stable (although to be honest, i never had any crashes while i was playing), and theres a marginal amount of more fps to be had. but theres more fundamental issues in this game that ´havent or cant be solved that way and some of those would need a complete overhaul of the game engine.

more random things: V runs around like a clown at most points in the game, give us a transmog feature, its really needed even if you rarely even see your character or their clothes.
life paths: They just dont do a lot, which is sad. but giving them any significance now would need a complete redo of the story, and thats sadly just not feasible
police chases: i think everyone reading this has heard about this, police just spawning in on foot a few meters away from you and basically give up chasing once you drove or ran 100m away. yes, they now spawn a tiny bit farther away, but they still wont make use of their cars or even chase you very far.
Countless AI issues, from normal on-foot npcs, to driving npcs. listing everything i'd have to say about that would take forever so i just wont bother, lets just say the AI isnt really AI but "walk to point a, walk to point b, repeat. same with the cars, only going on rails, stopping when anything obstructs the path.

and more, like i wish there were street vendors, restaurants where you can actually sit in and eat, more varied side quests/objectives that are not the copypasted "subdue this cyberpsycho, steal this data package, kill those gang members" (theres a few good sidequests, i give it that, but they are buried beneath the copypaste pile.). also the game still feels like it needs more verticality. its a giant cityscape with highrise buildings, yet the game rarely makes use of it outside of instanced mission areas.

we basically got promised an open world comparable to GTA, and just from looks alone, we got that, the game actually LOOKS stunning (when the textures finally loaded in), but theres just a myriad of other issues, yes, most of them minor... those minor issues just pile up so much tghat i cant recommend this game yet.

i sincerely hope the game will get some more updates that at least tackle some of my issues with this game, i am certain that there'll be more stability and glitch fixing, but for now i'd say don't buy this game just yet, wait for more updates or soem of the "free dlc" they are apparently bringing in at some point.

[EDIT: Gave the game another another chance, encountered a gamebreaking bug where a dialogue wouldnt advance and v cant stand up after talking to jackie within not even the first hour of the game, reloading a save didnt help, nor did restarting the game... uninstalled again and will now actually wait for major updates... ]
.

Honestly, i am someone who quite rapidly loses interest in games that dont give me extrinsic motivation all the time, but this game is different.
Theres lots of things to do, but they all roughly fall into a few categories:
Combat
Exploration
Trading
Which, not so coincidentally, are also the three ranks you progress in as you play the game.

Combat is either PvP or PvE, while i personally havent really delved into PvP at all, you can either go against other armed ships in a more classic pvp style, or you can embrace your naughty side and go pirating, interdicting people transporting things and "free" them of their possessions.
PvE can also consist of the aforementioned Piracy, just against AI Traders or miners, or as a more lawful approach, dropping into mining spots to defend miners from pirates and claiming those bounties.
If you feel inclined to, you can also drop into Conflict zones and help one of the factions of the current system to get an edge over the other, or if you really want to delve into PvE you can venture out and defend humanity against an Alien force.

Exploration Is a more laid back gameplay approach and consists of players roaming around Space to map the universe or maybe even just to travel to landmarks in the Milky way or just venture where very few have ventured before. Time doesnt matter, in Exploration its only you and your ship, your home and beacon with which you likely wont see another soul for weeks to months at end. And after your return to civilized space, you can sell all of that juicy mapping data to make your trip worth it monetarily.

Trading isnt as clear as the other two, its basically a mixture of three seperate things, actual Trading/hauling, Passenger faring and Mining.
Trading/hauling is simple, but highlights one of the most in-depth aspects of the game: its player influenced economy. Oh, a system has a bad pandemic outbreak? grab tonnes of medicine from systems that produce them and fly them their. Got a system that suffers from a war? same with medicine, but maybe also weapons or other things that might aid the war. a system having a booming economy? grab the things they produce for cheap to sell a few jumps further.
Passenger faring is different in that they can only picked up through passenger missions (missions being a thing i havent touched on, but they can be taken for pretty much any of the sandbox activities previously mentioned too) but in essence, the basic ones working the exact same as hauling stuff to a target system, and the more advanced ones needing you to keep some vips happy while flying them to landmarks potentially across the universe. (i havent delved into those myself much either)
MIning is more advanced and probably needs a seperate quick guide to do effectively, but in essence: shoot rocks, shoot spots on rocks differently, blow up rocks, get minerals, sell minerals. (this is the fastest way of gaining sh*tton of money if you want to really ruin your experience)

This game just gives you a lot of things to do, many things i havent even touched upon here, like driving around on a planets surface, discovering ancient alien ruins, modifying every part of your ship to your liking, finding new lifeforms, the got wrenching feeling of trying your first cone boost, the awesome feeling of experiencing the first few jumps and dropping close to a sun. and it has an extremely deep lore to boot with an actively developing history that can be influenced by the players as well.

of course the game also has a few shortcomings, and i know the game can be infinitley boring if you cant find your personal fun in it, the game just isnt for everyone, but honestly, if you enjoy space, and want a vast world to explore and leave your mark in, give it a try.
The game has also been on sale for a few bucks a few times, and a store that wont be named here even gave it for free, so if you already have it sitting around, give it a try
if you enjoy space and games that give intrinsic motivation, the undiscounted asking price is actually quite fair
for everyone else even slightly curious, a new discount wont be far off probably, now with the nex expansion around the corner, so just give it a shot.

I dont know how to properly end a review like this, this is the first wall of text review i've ever written (and mostly rambled about gameplay and didnt really review... eh) so..

Have a meow:
Meow

Still, to this date, without even the slightest hint of doubt, one of the best games ever made.

Now if only Valve could count to 3 we could get sequels to some absolute masterpieces.

Pay some, Pay more and then some. even in the initial character creation you are presented with countless options to buy things for hundreds of real world monetary units, while the actual character creation options without paying are severely limited. Game runs quite bad, using all of a computers resources and still being relatively choppy.
People rumoured that the game utilizes a cryptocurrency miner in the background because of the load it puts on your pc, but i don't think it does.

It might be a fine game if the whole monetisation gets overhauled and the game gets optimized A LOT.
else... don't bother, if you want good horny games, theres better an cheaper options here on steam, just wait for subverse for example, free options on itchio which shouldnt be too hard to find, and/or just look through patreon.