Before release, the only thing we knew what was CDPR had told us. They told us that the game was complex and full of RPG stuff. Turns out, it really is not all that complex and the RPG stuff is a bit theoretical.

I mean, you can drive to the quest location in a stolen car that is blue or a stolen car that is red or your very own black car or maybe on a motorcycle. Or you can jog. Or sprint. So many options! And when you get there, you can kill the target in any of 200 different ways. So many choices!!

The dialogue options do not appear to be all that impressive and mostly there's not that many choices in what you say. Quests were supposed to be complex but they're sort of not. The game world doesn't really give a shit what you do. Kill a whole bunch of innocent people, you'll have cops on your ass for half a minute before they realise that they have donut withdrawal and give up. Kill a whole bunch of gangbangers and nobody cares one bit. Not even the gangs.

I'm disappointed how often dialog options are basically the same thing (see screenshot in attachment), but phrased slightly differently. Why even give options in such situation, it never gives any satisfaction to choose from identical choices and only highlights illusion of choice.

it's not much of an RPG and just standard action-adventure, even the people you interact with feel shallow in everything they do, and the one person that even remotely gave the feeling of a connection gets dumped in the dumpster.

I really thought cd red was more brave on game design choices with this title, but this reads like they just served the casual marked.

A quick answer for the question:

1, It's not an RPG
2, It's not Complex
3, You can turn the difficulty settings higher but no reason.The drop is not better just the game will be harder.

It's not a sandbox game like GTA5 after the main/side missions you have a bunch of mini missions but after that you can uninstall the game. No random quests/events/jobs or side activities no factions like nomads/gangs/corporations just the pure grind for better weapons and higher levels.

Somewhere in between Borderlands and Fallout 4, with a little bit of modern Deus Ex and modern Far Cry in there.

This includes a laundry list of the same-looking weapons with stat increases every level, a basic crafting, upgrade, and modification system. There's a perk list you whittle your way through to unlock 10% damage upgrades etc. There's a body modification system that's basically stat increases and mod slot increases. A couple of minor upgrades like Gorilla Arms or Mantis Blades that really only add a weapon, and outside of those, the body modifications don't impact character visuals or anything like that. If you want a game that appeals more to this aspect of RPG stat upgrade mechanics, I'd recommend sticking with Borderlands.

Very minor dialogue changes in skills or lifepaths. So far, I haven't run into any dialogue situations that require any sort of skill check. Depending on your skills levels, you might see some dialogue options pop up that you may have not seen otherwise? I don't know for sure, because I don't know if there's other possible dialogue options with certain characters that may arise if you reach a certain level in a skill, because they seem hidden until you're at that level. The dialogue mainly consists of [Continue Story], [Secondary Information], [Dialogue Choice Based on Hidden Lifepath or Skill Amount] (maybe). If you want something with a bit more dialogue complexity, I'd recommend something like New Vegas and Vampire: The Masquerade. Hell, even Fallout 3 has more dialogue complexity than this game. Hell, The Witcher 3 has more drastic dialogue decisions. The choices seem so inconsequential in Cyberpunk.

There's no real sandbox, make-your-own choices style of gameplay here. It all gets railroaded into the main plot that you're stuck going through. There's no sandbox style of gameplay where you get to forge your own story into Night City or anything like that. There's no real decision when it comes to dealing with factions or lifepaths outside of the story. I haven't seen anything that deals with relations to the corpo lifestyle, the streetkid lifestyle, or the nomad lifestyle outside the beginning of the game ang a few dialogue choices. There's no sort of faction relation like in say a Fallout game or anything like that. So you can't be constantly attacking say...Maelstrom and have them get pissed and constantly try to attack you like say...attacking the Legion in New Vegas and you run into hit squads occasionally. You're not going to be able to walk into a Tyger Claws base and talk to their leadership to go through complex missions that can make your relationship with them fluctuate. If you want a game that lets you do stuff like that, I'd recommend something more like Kenshi, Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, Mount & Blade, Kingdom Come, etc.

Cyberpunk also feels like a weak Immersive Sim. It's hard to pinpoint exactly why I don't enjoy this aspect too much in Cyberpunk, but I'll do my best. I think my main issue with it again comes down to player choice and how it doesn't affect much outside of how much you'll get paid for a mission. For example, you'll receive gigs from a certain character as you roam throughout the city where you have to infiltrate a base to install malware or something like that. Going stealthily just means that I might get bonus cash at the end of the mission for being good at it. Most of the enemies are a bit of a joke, so I can run in guns blazing and beat the mission in like 2 minutes. There's elements of immersive sims where you can find various ways to navigate a location, but most of them are pretty easily side-stepped early on in the game if you unlock a skill where you can double jump and pretty much cheese your way around every environment, and most of the time this makes skill checks where you can force open doors obsolete. It's too easy to hack your way through everything and bypass cameras, doors, and even enemies from the beginning of the game. Another issue with the immersive sim aspect of this game for me is that a majority of it is inconsequential side-missions that don't affect anything in the story. Sneaking through a small garage and stealing data or destroying drugs or whatever doesn't have any sort of cause and effect on the factions in the game, so overtaking a location won't cause any sort of faction struggle or....I dunno, anything? In other immersive sim style games, how you approach an area will have an effect on the story and characters around you, and may cause certain events to happen or not happen down the line. It's real basic, but in Human Revolution, if you don't sneak through the plant and slaughter all of the terrorists guns-blazing, then once you get back to Sarif industries, all of the employees talk shit about how you weren't sneaky. Pritchard likens you to Atilla the Hun, etc. You can tackle various side-missions and locations in that game that, if you complete them early, the game acknowledges it and you bypass certain obstacles later in the game. I just want the choices you make, and how you tackle the game to mean something more than I got a little bit more money. Maybe make it so if you don't sneak through a warehouse full of Maelstrom, and you get caught, they call in reinforcements that push your shit in. This is lazier than modern Far Cry games. If you want games that do the immersive sim style gameplay better, any of the Deus Ex games (I've never played Invisible War, so I don't know about that), the new Prey, Thief, Dishonored, etc. will do much better for you.

Cyberpunk 2077 isn't necessarily a bad game, but it's definitely not the game that the developers have touted it as being for the last couple years. It has a lot of half-baked elements that other games have done better. Hell, it has elements that CDPR's other games have done better. There's a lot of people that say it isn't an RPG, which is wrong, because it IS, but it's one of the weakest role-playing games I've felt. And everyone who has been saying that it includes everything CDPR said they'd include are blinded by fanboyism or buyer's remorse. No amount of bootlicking can disguise the fact that this game can't have been what a lot of people at CDPR wanted to make, let alone let ship out for everyone to criticize. I hope one day we hear the full story and learn exactly what happened behind the scenes that caused such a mess. At the moment, all we can postulate is that someone high-up made some bad decisions, whether that led to miscommunication between the staff, or some staff leaving due to mismanagement and poor employee handling, or whatever. Because I'm not done being a dickhead, let me recommend some other Cyberpunk games that I think others should try if that's what they wanted. E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy, G String, Shadowrun, Oni, the various Ghost in the Shell games, V-A11 HALL-A, Cloudpunk, Observer, Ghostrunner, Hard Reset, Mirror's Edge, Neotokyo (At least listen to the OST), the Deus Ex games, Astral Chain, Satellite Reign, Binary Domain, Due Process, Ruiner, and I'm sure so much more.

Thank you for your huge reply. Ive read alot in it that Ive been afraid of.

Mehh for now Im good, Ive heard enough, no urge to get this now. There are still more important games.
Im glad I havent really played kingdom come yet, I just started and stopped because of my gear, its the first game for me after I build a new machine.
And if I want a shooter, there is still metro exodus which I havent touched at all.

Somehow this reminds me on the disappointement on fallout 4, Im not falling for this shit again.
Neither was I ever interested on borderlands or modern far cry.

The Brilliance (and failure) of Cyberpunk 2077

Should tell you everything you need to know.

In general it is pretty RPG-ish in some aspects, but not every.

You can be an effective combatant with any weapon and without any investments into a specific weapon type.
You can make the most story defining choices without any skill checks.
You can be a pretty effective hacker without any investments into hacking perks and stats.And only some endgame enemies require high amount of RAM to be hacked.
You absolutely can be effective stealth player without any investments. I picked +20% crouching move speed perk and aerial takedown, but it is not necessary.

And leveling system overall looks quite boring, 20% of useful and interesting perks, and the rest of them are small passive bonuses to some stats, like +3% to smg damage, and pickable 3 times. Who made up that? Really? 3%? 9% of damage bonus in total, for what? Taking down enemy with 14 bullets instead of 15? In witcher 3 perks were more interesting.

Cybernetic augmentations are much more interesting - they can really dramatically impact your stats, be it maximal health, encumbrance, armor or much more else. Also you can get implants to get mantis blades or rocket launcher, which are effective and impactful game style changers.

However, the game still has some skill checks. For example, attribute requirements to use heavy weapons.
Attribute requirements for interacting with environment (hacking in, breaking things, etc.), some skill checks in dialogues (not a lot, badly, and half of them are not decision answers, but blue "say more" ones). Skill checks are pretty sparse, but you encounter them almost often enough to get an rpg-ish feel.

Maybe I am just playing on easy difficulty so there is no need for me to plan a character build? No! I finished the game already on very hard difficulty, I did it on level 26, without distributing half of my attribute points and most of my perk points, because I didn't need to! It just didn't have enough impact for core gameplay to carry about, so I save most of leveling resources for later, if I get interesting skill check requirements.

In conclusion, the game is stuck somewhere between an action-adventure and rpg-lite. I don't hate the game at all, I enjoyed it till the very end, I enjoy playing it now, both the story and gameplay (stealth, gunplay, melee, hacking), I am still playing it to get other endings, but the role-playing system is just one step higher than something I saw in far cry 3 or tomb raider reboot. Certainly not close to New Vegas. Somewhere between RPG-lite and action-adventure with levelling. Gameplay-wise, it is pretty complex - it includes quite a lot of mechanics and activities. Weapon system has fake complexity though - it is the same dozen of guns with leveled stats and randomized bonuses. Quite casual. Finished it on very hard, one-shot headshotted almost everything with 50 BMG sniper rifle. Meanwhile in doom eternal I was killed up to dozen of times per fight, on nightmare difficulty.