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The Game Is Fixed: Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition 2024 Review
Game Score: 9.5/10
It’s easy four years onward since the disastrous debut of Cyberpunk 2077 to treat the news of its “redemption arc” with a healthy degree of skepticism, or to dismiss its massive commercial success (30 million copies sold) as just another bottom-of-the-barrel manifestation of how capitalism has inured us to buy anything.
Easy, and wrong. For while it’s true that in 2020 Cyberpunk was an unmitigated disaster, something magical and extremely expensive has materialized since then. While it unquestionably began with Studio Trigger and CD Projekt Red’s collaboration on the brilliant Edgerunners anime that breathed new life and interest into this world, the massive restructuring to the game’s mechanics coinciding with the release of Phantom Liberty has completely remade 2077.
In short, the game is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 has the most engaging gameplay of any title since The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and freed from the burden of its initial launch plus the added layers that are grafted onto its narrative with the Phantom Liberty DLC, the maturity and subtlety of it’s script acquire full force. Put bluntly, this is a damn good game, and you should buy it.
Let’s start with the gist. The premise is simple: In a dystopian future beset by hypercapitalism, corporatocracy, and near-civilizational collapse, you play as V (Gavin Drea or Cherami Leigh), a cybernetically-augmented mercenary whose gender, appearance, and backstory are dependent upon player choice.
After V’s attempt to rob the multinational Japanese conglomerate Arasaka goes awry, they are shot in the head and left for dead, only to be revived by an experimental biochip encoded with the engram of rockstar-turned-terrorist Johnny Silverhand (Keanu Reeves).
As the biochip steadily overwrites V’s consciousness with Johnny’s, the two must work together to separate and save V’s life, ultimately culminating in a battle that sees V decide the fate of the Arasaka cooperation or die trying. Before getting into the story any further (SPOILERS BELOW), let’s talk mechanics and gameplay. What is it like living in Night City, and how does V survive in this City of Dreams and nightmares?
Chippin’ in
Progression in Cyberpunk 2077 has been streamlined and totally improved since release. The early progression system was chaotic, unbalanced, and simultaneously offered miniscule rewards for leveling up while enabling you to break the game through crafting. A hundred grenades, anyone?
Now everything has been remade. V gains experience through quest completion and combat, simultaneously progressing to a level cap of 60 (thus earning points to distribute to their attributes and perk trees) and increasing five general classes of skills (Netrunner, Headhunter, Shinobi, Engineer, and Solo) that offer passive benefits to gameplay.
Skills can also be permanently increased through progression shards (as can cyberware capacity and carrying capacity). Basic player stats and special actions (such as tearing down a fence or opening a secured door quietly) are affected by the player’s distribution of Attribute Points into five categories: Body, Reflex, Technical Ability, Intelligence, and Cool.
Each category governs one or more specific classes of weapons (such as assault rifles or shotguns) or other modes of gameplay, such as adrenaline mode or quickhacking. After a required number of attribute points are distributed in a given attribute, Perk Points can be distributed in perk trees governed by that attribute to dramatically impact gameplay.
To give an example: In most builds since 2022 I’ve prioritized Reflexes, Technical Ability, and Body, roughly in that order. With body you increase strength and health and can unlock Adrenaline Mode, which increases your max health and stamina for a limited time. By distributing points in Reflexes, V can improve their mastery with assault rifles, submachine guns, and edged weapons like katana. Wait, katana? Why the hell would we use blades in a game bristling with automatic and even heat-seaking guns? One word: cyberware.
Built Different
Cyberware, along with minor boosts from certain tactical clothing, determines your armor rating, maxable at 1500, which reduces damage by about 60% at the highest levels.
More importantly, Cyberware vastly increases the range of bonuses and abilities V can employ to go from run-of-the-mill zero to borged-out hero. The most iconic cyberware in 2077 is the Sandevistan, an operating system (i.e. spinal) implant that can be activated to grant its user a burst of time-limited super-speed, as well as damage and critical bonuses with more advanced models.
With the Sandy, melee becomes an extremely powerful way to play, as you can blitz through ranks of enemies and cut them down sword-in-hand before warping back to normal speed and engaging with quickhacks or guns.
But that just scratches the surface. Cyberware exists that can reduce recoil, allow you to double jump and dash in mid-air, turn weapons non-lethal or, for the pitiless, imbue them with poison, thermal, or electrical damage.
A limited cyberpsychosis factor has been added for players since Update 2.0. With the “Fury” perk, V can exceed their cyberware by up to 50 points at the cost of a massive reduction in health, each point of excess adding a 0.1% to engage “Fury” mode, where damage is greatly increased, the screen blurs to orange sepia, and V cackles maniacally, wreaking destruction in their wake.
But in addition to that unsettling feature, for those primarily acquainted with Edgerunners, you’re in for a treat, as virtually every weapon and ability seen in the show was based directly off the game or subsequently added in.
Want to whip people like Lucy? It’s called a Monowire and is buyable and upgradeable throughout the game. Want to slice and dice chooms with Mantis Blades? Equally available (just watch out for those Mantis Blade-wielding MaxTac girls, they will fucking murder you). Speaking of MaxTac (“just fucking try!”), they along with the entire cop system have been redesigned.
Ain’t Got No Rights Now
If V commits a crime, officers don’t just randomly appear behind you (well, mostly). The NCPD will send in patrols on bikes or unarmored squad cars, gradually escalating to armored squad cars, missile-launcher equipped halftracks, and finally MaxTac AVs as your spree of villainy proceeds.
Should V flee in a vehicle, the police will set up roadblocks to intercept them throughout the city. Likewise, all vehicles, whether equipped with built-in weapons or not, can be utilized for combat, from running down enemies with a katana on motorcycle to shooting desperately through you’re own windshield as the boys in blue roll up to gun you down.
Justice is swift and harsh in Night City, and at its best moments, as many other reviewers have noted, a police battle in Cyberpunk 2077 resembles a borged-out version of the famous/infamous bank shoot-ouut in Michael Mann’s Heat for its intensity.
This is nowhere near an exhaustive list to every improvement in 2077 that has been made since launch, including such basic things as customizable vehicles and a working metro system, but the point is, the mean streets of Night City are now even meaner.
Combat in Cyberpunk 2077 is so dynamic, fast-paced, and punishing on the higher difficulties that it puts even CD Projekt Red’s earlier achievements in The Witcher 3 to shame. Like in that game, I heavily advise playing on the highest or second highest difficulty possible in 2077, because while the lower levels let you skate by, at its upper tiers, 2077 requires the same level of thoughtfulness and dedication in crafting your build that The Witcher 3 did, reinforcing from a roleplaying perspective V’s professionalism and the dire stakes to playing solo in Night City.
A Thing of Beauty
But where Cyberpunk 2077 really shines is its story, both that of the main game and Phantom Liberty, which compliment each other extremely well if the latter is played midway through the game when it first becomes available in Pacifica.
Johnny Silverhand, acted by Keanu with equal terms bravado, obnoxiousness, and genuine pathos, is a legend, and while choices matter in an RPG, not all choices are created equal. The more the player empathizes with Johnny (difficult as that may be at times) and explores the nuances and intricacies of his moral vision, the deeper the narrative emerges as a redemption arc wherein a charismatic but narcissistic asshole of a ghost matures into your best friend, willing to die for you and push you to vengeance and glory.
Likewise, dependent on player choice, the game allows V to fully embrace divergent moral choices for which they are ultimately held responsible.
Sacrifice Johnny and condemn a rogue netrunner to slavery as a government superweapon? Don’t think things will end well for you. Ditto for selling out to Arasaka for a cure for your impending death. Mount the final battle with your friends and V will survive into an uncertain future, but many good people will die to save their life. And then there is the “secret ending”, which by now is not so secret: take matters into your own hands and fight for your life as a one person army, or die trying.
Through the base game and the DLC, Cyberpunk 2077 presents a world of corruption and nihilism, then subverts it by asserting basic philosophical truths again and again.
Choices matter. Personal responsibility is absolute. Only solidarity can save us from the despair of inequality. Empires rise and fall, but legends live forever. Death is terrifying but ultimately inevitable. Sometimes the greatest act of love for our friends is to not drag them down with us as we fall, gun in hand and on fire, into graves of our own making.
If there is no Heaven and Hell, nor Demons and Gods, only the life we are given and what we make of it matters. Is freedom survival at all costs? Or is it the courage to never stop fighting, even hopelessly and in vain, without blinking? Consider this. And buy Cyberpunk 2077. The game is fixed. It is a thing of beauty, and it will never fade away.
Photo credit CD Projekt Red and Studio Trigger
Need more Cyberpunk? Dive deeper into 2077 source material, merch, and lore with our Top Picks page!
The Path/パス is an online bilingual journal of arts, culture, and entertainment bringing you in-depth reviews, news, and analysis on the hottest properties in sci-fi fantasy film, television, and gaming.
Through in-depth research on intellectual properties and major franchises, we develop content covering your favorite books, series, films, games, and shows, such as The Witcher, Cyberpunk 2077, Lord of the Rings, House of the Dragon, Fallout, and Shogun.
If you enjoy our takes, consider buying us a coffee! Your support will help us continue producing excellent pop culture writing in English and Japanese for a true East-meets-West entertainment experience! Arigatō gozaimasu!
The post The Game Is Fixed: Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition 2024 Review appeared first on The Path.
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Game Score: 9.5/10
It’s easy four years onward since the disastrous debut of Cyberpunk 2077 to treat the news of its “redemption arc” with a healthy degree of skepticism, or to dismiss its massive commercial success (30 million copies sold) as just another bottom-of-the-barrel manifestation of how capitalism has inured us to buy anything.
Easy, and wrong. For while it’s true that in 2020 Cyberpunk was an unmitigated disaster, something magical and extremely expensive has materialized since then. While it unquestionably began with Studio Trigger and CD Projekt Red’s collaboration on the brilliant Edgerunners anime that breathed new life and interest into this world, the massive restructuring to the game’s mechanics coinciding with the release of Phantom Liberty has completely remade 2077.
In short, the game is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 has the most engaging gameplay of any title since The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and freed from the burden of its initial launch plus the added layers that are grafted onto its narrative with the Phantom Liberty DLC, the maturity and subtlety of it’s script acquire full force. Put bluntly, this is a damn good game, and you should buy it.
Let’s start with the gist. The premise is simple: In a dystopian future beset by hypercapitalism, corporatocracy, and near-civilizational collapse, you play as V (Gavin Drea or Cherami Leigh), a cybernetically-augmented mercenary whose gender, appearance, and backstory are dependent upon player choice.
After V’s attempt to rob the multinational Japanese conglomerate Arasaka goes awry, they are shot in the head and left for dead, only to be revived by an experimental biochip encoded with the engram of rockstar-turned-terrorist Johnny Silverhand (Keanu Reeves).
As the biochip steadily overwrites V’s consciousness with Johnny’s, the two must work together to separate and save V’s life, ultimately culminating in a battle that sees V decide the fate of the Arasaka cooperation or die trying. Before getting into the story any further (SPOILERS BELOW), let’s talk mechanics and gameplay. What is it like living in Night City, and how does V survive in this City of Dreams and nightmares?
Chippin’ in
Progression in Cyberpunk 2077 has been streamlined and totally improved since release. The early progression system was chaotic, unbalanced, and simultaneously offered miniscule rewards for leveling up while enabling you to break the game through crafting. A hundred grenades, anyone?
Now everything has been remade. V gains experience through quest completion and combat, simultaneously progressing to a level cap of 60 (thus earning points to distribute to their attributes and perk trees) and increasing five general classes of skills (Netrunner, Headhunter, Shinobi, Engineer, and Solo) that offer passive benefits to gameplay.
Skills can also be permanently increased through progression shards (as can cyberware capacity and carrying capacity). Basic player stats and special actions (such as tearing down a fence or opening a secured door quietly) are affected by the player’s distribution of Attribute Points into five categories: Body, Reflex, Technical Ability, Intelligence, and Cool.
Each category governs one or more specific classes of weapons (such as assault rifles or shotguns) or other modes of gameplay, such as adrenaline mode or quickhacking. After a required number of attribute points are distributed in a given attribute, Perk Points can be distributed in perk trees governed by that attribute to dramatically impact gameplay.
To give an example: In most builds since 2022 I’ve prioritized Reflexes, Technical Ability, and Body, roughly in that order. With body you increase strength and health and can unlock Adrenaline Mode, which increases your max health and stamina for a limited time. By distributing points in Reflexes, V can improve their mastery with assault rifles, submachine guns, and edged weapons like katana. Wait, katana? Why the hell would we use blades in a game bristling with automatic and even heat-seaking guns? One word: cyberware.
Built Different
Cyberware, along with minor boosts from certain tactical clothing, determines your armor rating, maxable at 1500, which reduces damage by about 60% at the highest levels.
More importantly, Cyberware vastly increases the range of bonuses and abilities V can employ to go from run-of-the-mill zero to borged-out hero. The most iconic cyberware in 2077 is the Sandevistan, an operating system (i.e. spinal) implant that can be activated to grant its user a burst of time-limited super-speed, as well as damage and critical bonuses with more advanced models.
With the Sandy, melee becomes an extremely powerful way to play, as you can blitz through ranks of enemies and cut them down sword-in-hand before warping back to normal speed and engaging with quickhacks or guns.
But that just scratches the surface. Cyberware exists that can reduce recoil, allow you to double jump and dash in mid-air, turn weapons non-lethal or, for the pitiless, imbue them with poison, thermal, or electrical damage.
A limited cyberpsychosis factor has been added for players since Update 2.0. With the “Fury” perk, V can exceed their cyberware by up to 50 points at the cost of a massive reduction in health, each point of excess adding a 0.1% to engage “Fury” mode, where damage is greatly increased, the screen blurs to orange sepia, and V cackles maniacally, wreaking destruction in their wake.
But in addition to that unsettling feature, for those primarily acquainted with Edgerunners, you’re in for a treat, as virtually every weapon and ability seen in the show was based directly off the game or subsequently added in.
Want to whip people like Lucy? It’s called a Monowire and is buyable and upgradeable throughout the game. Want to slice and dice chooms with Mantis Blades? Equally available (just watch out for those Mantis Blade-wielding MaxTac girls, they will fucking murder you). Speaking of MaxTac (“just fucking try!”), they along with the entire cop system have been redesigned.
Ain’t Got No Rights Now
If V commits a crime, officers don’t just randomly appear behind you (well, mostly). The NCPD will send in patrols on bikes or unarmored squad cars, gradually escalating to armored squad cars, missile-launcher equipped halftracks, and finally MaxTac AVs as your spree of villainy proceeds.
Should V flee in a vehicle, the police will set up roadblocks to intercept them throughout the city. Likewise, all vehicles, whether equipped with built-in weapons or not, can be utilized for combat, from running down enemies with a katana on motorcycle to shooting desperately through you’re own windshield as the boys in blue roll up to gun you down.
Justice is swift and harsh in Night City, and at its best moments, as many other reviewers have noted, a police battle in Cyberpunk 2077 resembles a borged-out version of the famous/infamous bank shoot-ouut in Michael Mann’s Heat for its intensity.
This is nowhere near an exhaustive list to every improvement in 2077 that has been made since launch, including such basic things as customizable vehicles and a working metro system, but the point is, the mean streets of Night City are now even meaner.
Combat in Cyberpunk 2077 is so dynamic, fast-paced, and punishing on the higher difficulties that it puts even CD Projekt Red’s earlier achievements in The Witcher 3 to shame. Like in that game, I heavily advise playing on the highest or second highest difficulty possible in 2077, because while the lower levels let you skate by, at its upper tiers, 2077 requires the same level of thoughtfulness and dedication in crafting your build that The Witcher 3 did, reinforcing from a roleplaying perspective V’s professionalism and the dire stakes to playing solo in Night City.
A Thing of Beauty
But where Cyberpunk 2077 really shines is its story, both that of the main game and Phantom Liberty, which compliment each other extremely well if the latter is played midway through the game when it first becomes available in Pacifica.
Johnny Silverhand, acted by Keanu with equal terms bravado, obnoxiousness, and genuine pathos, is a legend, and while choices matter in an RPG, not all choices are created equal. The more the player empathizes with Johnny (difficult as that may be at times) and explores the nuances and intricacies of his moral vision, the deeper the narrative emerges as a redemption arc wherein a charismatic but narcissistic asshole of a ghost matures into your best friend, willing to die for you and push you to vengeance and glory.
Likewise, dependent on player choice, the game allows V to fully embrace divergent moral choices for which they are ultimately held responsible.
Sacrifice Johnny and condemn a rogue netrunner to slavery as a government superweapon? Don’t think things will end well for you. Ditto for selling out to Arasaka for a cure for your impending death. Mount the final battle with your friends and V will survive into an uncertain future, but many good people will die to save their life. And then there is the “secret ending”, which by now is not so secret: take matters into your own hands and fight for your life as a one person army, or die trying.
Through the base game and the DLC, Cyberpunk 2077 presents a world of corruption and nihilism, then subverts it by asserting basic philosophical truths again and again.
Choices matter. Personal responsibility is absolute. Only solidarity can save us from the despair of inequality. Empires rise and fall, but legends live forever. Death is terrifying but ultimately inevitable. Sometimes the greatest act of love for our friends is to not drag them down with us as we fall, gun in hand and on fire, into graves of our own making.
If there is no Heaven and Hell, nor Demons and Gods, only the life we are given and what we make of it matters. Is freedom survival at all costs? Or is it the courage to never stop fighting, even hopelessly and in vain, without blinking? Consider this. And buy Cyberpunk 2077. The game is fixed. It is a thing of beauty, and it will never fade away.
Photo credit CD Projekt Red and Studio Trigger
Need more Cyberpunk? Dive deeper into 2077 source material, merch, and lore with our Top Picks page!
The Path/パス is an online bilingual journal of arts, culture, and entertainment bringing you in-depth reviews, news, and analysis on the hottest properties in sci-fi fantasy film, television, and gaming.
Through in-depth research on intellectual properties and major franchises, we develop content covering your favorite books, series, films, games, and shows, such as The Witcher, Cyberpunk 2077, Lord of the Rings, House of the Dragon, Fallout, and Shogun.
If you enjoy our takes, consider buying us a coffee! Your support will help us continue producing excellent pop culture writing in English and Japanese for a true East-meets-West entertainment experience! Arigatō gozaimasu!
The post The Game Is Fixed: Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition 2024 Review appeared first on The Path.