In the current state this game is, it's an easy recommendation so long as you have the hardware up to snuff to run it. I'm still shocked at how much my machine struggled to run this game from time to time. Max settings at 1440p without RTX and with quality DLSS lead to me dipping in the mid 40s in incredibly crowded areas, such as city center. Weirdly enough, the game's performance didn't change much no matter how much I altered the settings. However, everywhere else it was fine, though the range was far greater than I'd prefer. Easily 160+ fps in the badlands and outskirts of NC, mostly pushing 70/80 in the city when not in city center.

Anyways, enough on performance. Gameplay wise, the 2.0 update massively improved how entertaining the sandbox is for the game. All of the different trees are fun as hell and play quite a bit differently. The only one I feel a bit mixed about is netrunning now; the RAM costs for quickhacks are pretty intense, and pretty much force you to use the overdrive mode. With the level cap hitting 60 now, and picking up perk and attribute points across the map, you can reach hilarious levels of power. I do wish that the enemy AI did more, and I wish there was more enemy variety, but overall it didn't wear me out on my most recent playthrough until the end. And hey, at least Adam Smasher is actually a bossfight now. Actually killed me a couple of times on hard difficulty. I do think that Very Hard hits the level of tedium that I personally don't find enjoyable, but it's not impossible.

Storywise, damn. This ♥♥♥♥ hits. I really like the main story, I love most of the important side characters (River being the exception, I thought he was just plain boring.) I dug the story in Phantom Liberty, but honestly... it felt really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ short; surprisingly so. The gigs in Dogtown actually having a narrative beyond text messages was an awesome change, though.

On the subject of PL, if it weren't for the sweeping changes (included for free,) of 2.0, I'm not sure I'd recommend it at the launch price. If I hadn't been miffing around in NC between every mission, I could've blazed through it incredibly quickly. Dogtown is cool, the aesthetic is fairly unique, but it's a relatively small, high quality area. I'm not a fan of the airdrop system in there; there was an Iconic weapon that dropped only from a single specific airdrop spot and it's apparently bugged, according to mine and other people's reported experiences. Ended up having to just get it with CET commands.

Game is fine on its own, but some of the mods are definitely great for the player experience. Stuff like Arasaka arms add excellent flavor to the cyberware, which was massively improved in 2.0, but the amount of visual changes added by that being next to nothing boggled my mind. Arasaka arms gives you loads of sweet options for arms. Would've done more, but other body cyberware mods were breaking my game.

On the subject of the open world gameplay, my opinion sours quite a bit. It's not necessary, and unless you're a banal completionist like me, DO NOT DO EVERY NCPD SCANNER HUSTLE. Easily the worst aspect of the game so far; it's the worst sort of open world padding possible. A good number of the gigs in the main game are pretty mediocre too. I would've rather it have been more like what they did with Dogtown, where there's not a million to do but the ones that are there are actually enjoyable.

So summarize, in this current state and with PL I think the game hits about the 9/10. Story, music, writing, gameplay, power fantasy, ending were all great. The one thing that drags it down, though, is the open world fluff being pretty mediocre.

So, to conclude, 8.5/10.

I still think that's being generous, as the state this game released in is unacceptable. If the game had launched like this, that would still have been somewhat disappointing, as there are still plenty of broken promises by CDPR. But holy ♥♥♥♥, everyone knows by now how awful the launch for this game was, and I still have a hard time forgiving that. CDPR really damaged their reputation with that launch, and I desperately hope they learned their lesson. But with how gangbusters the sales were on this game... I'm afraid for the release of their next project. Remember, never preorder. They will lie to you.

I wanted to love this game. Hell, I like certain parts of this game.

For starters, I find the idea that this game takes a dozen hours to get going is silly. The introductory part where you mine, touch the macguffin, fight pirates, get ship, go join organization, and do a couple of missions took me maybe two hours? And I enjoyed those.

I've enjoyed most of my time with this game, but let me state first and foremost : do not buy this game at this point in time. You will need mods. This game needs an optimization pass badly, though I don't forsee that happening, knowing how Bethesda is with their games. I have an RTX 3080, Ryzen 5900x, 64gb of DDR4 RAM that I can't remember the speed of off the top of my head, solid cooling, etc. I can run raytraced cyberpunk at 60fps without DLSS. That game, at the very least, earns the stress it puts on my system. This game, on the other hand? Sometimes it looks wonderful, such as when you're walking across a moon for the first time, a gas giant with its rings sitting above you, blotting out the sky. But the cities are simply abysmal to look at, and for whatever reason I can NOT run the game at a stable 60fps no matter what I do. Even on low settings at 720p, nothing will get Akila City, New Atlantis, or Neon to not look like choppy messes. And that's not even going into how the cities themselves look horrid, for all the havoc they seem to reek on my hardware (none of which is actually struggling when I monitor them, by the way, which further entrenches my belief that this is a software optimization issue.)

Moving on from that? The game grows stale very fast. There's no soul to it. The UC is so incredibly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bland, even with a somewhat interesting faction questline. The Freestar Rangers are goofy wannabe cowboys with quite possibly one of the dumbest looking city I've seen in a somewhat high scii-fi setting. Seriously, wooden palisades and muddy streets for the capital of a political entity that was building mechs and fighting massive battles against the supposedly monolithic UC? Give me a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ joke. The main story is serviceable, but only barely. The characters are serviceable, but only barely. It doesn't help that pretty much all of the companions with any real character are all from Constellation, and are all similar to one another in terms of morality and outlook. They're just so... BORING. The Crimson Fleet are incredibly lame interpretations of pirates. The Ryujin questline is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terrible unless you spec into stealth, and even then it's just the McDonalds at home meme applied to Cyberpunk.

Moving on from that, I've seen many touting how this is such a bug-free Bethesda launch.
I played Skyrim at launch and don't remember having anywhere near as many issues as I have with this game. I'm thankful that I'm not playing on Xbox, because if I didn't have access to console commands I'd be pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pissed. I've been locked out of all of my ships more times than I can count. The last 50 hours or so of my playthrough my ship was empty aside from me and my follower, as all of my crewmates I'd assigned to my ship would simply not show up. Having a massive class C ship empty just felt... hollow. Oh, and the last 10 hours I had to no-clip my way into my actual landing bay, because my ship decided to no longer open the landing bay doors. Maybe it was possessed by HAL-9000?
Credit where credit is due, the gunplay is good. Voice acting is solid. Ship building has good bones, but is incredibly flawed. The base UI is serviceable, but I highly recommend getting the SkyUI mod ASAP because it's significantly better. Audio is pretty good. Creature design for some of the fauna is straight up nightmare fuel for me personally. I haven't felt so reviled and struggled to look at a game creature as I did with the cricket/praying mantises the size of a large car that would sprint at me. Seriously, some of the ♥♥♥♥ is horrifying and fascinating (though it is somewhat repetitive when you begin to explore planets.

It's already been talked to death how loading screen-centric this game is, and yeah, it's bad. Not much for me to add there, other than the fact that honestly the procedural content sucks so much ass I question why people want the generated cells to be bigger. Not to mention the 1k planets are honestly pretty boring overall, though to be fair that's a more grounded look than everything being wild and exotic. Most celestial bodies are barren. I'm fine with that.

Idk. There's more I could say, but like this review, the game itself drags on to long and won't leave a lasting impact on anyone, I think. Even if I take away my nostalgia factor, nothing about this feels as memorable or iconic as Skyrim or Oblivion to me.

TL;DR: Wait for sale if you really love Bethesda Games. If you don't like Bethesda-isms, give this game a wide berth. The procedurally generated content is incredibly repetitive and on the whole sucks. And when I say procedurally generated, it encompasses more than you'll expect. There's no variation to, for example, the abandoned cryolabs you'll find across dozens of planets. The data slates with stories are the same. Loot placement is the same. Obstacles are the same. The only thing that changes are the enemies and what faction they are. This is the same for many of the other generative content locations. Stick to the core, unless you really want to play the same ♥♥♥♥♥♥ dungeons over and over.