For what it’s worth I 100%'d the game before all the major patches. It was a good game. Marketing overhyped it and the E3 reveal that was a vertical slice gave us features that would never be present in the actual game.
That stuff aside? Strong stories in the side quests, a pretty decent main quest with good use of the cyberpunk setting. Fairly dynamic gameplay depending on how you class and a strong fashion side.
The only actual bugs/issues I encountered in the game were 1 quest would bug if you scanned something (which is actually a cool mechanic if it were intended.), meaning the quest needed to be completed a certain way. Other than that, crafting was time consuming because you had to press the button over and over. My last issue is just an issue I have with open world games, when it’s “over” the game just sends you back to your last save.
From other people online the main complaints seem to be “immmersion”, little ability to engage with the city, cops were broken and features that were promised weren’t in the game (wall climbing mantis blades…)
Well, playing through the game normally there’s 0 reason to ever open fire on police. Yes, they’d spawn behind you and etc but cops just aren’t a part of the game in terms of you being an antagonist that they have to stop. Basically, if you want to become a cyberpsycho and just mass murder, you can but it’s just waves of teleporting cops. There’s no purpose to doing it in the first place.
There’s a lot of comparisons to this game and GTA which I just don’t understand. A much more apt comparison would be the similarities between 2077 and Starfield, where 2077’s world is really visually compelling and a lot of the quest flow feels really well done, whereas Starfield has the engagement with the setting done impeccably but some of the quests flow are a little dull (go here, talk, go there, talk, go back to here, talk, completed…). GTA is pretty much just a physics sandbox with tasks.
All this said, unfulfilled is a good word for the potential of 2077 as there were a lot of points where the game would have gone beyond above and beyond if they’d accomplished what it seemed like they wanted and it seems that the 2.0/PL update will bring some of that polish. I think the key factor here is the relic upgrades - an entire slot just unavailable for the game.