Benedict Holland

As of the 1.25 patch that made the game playable on ps5 and Xbox 1 X, it's fine. It's an open world game. You have skill trees. Largely skills don't matter but builds are incredibly complicated. Skills unlock with increases to ability stats but skills in skill trees can also depend on use of that skill (e.g., you need 14 levels in shotguns to use a skill in the shotgun tree like skyrim but you also might need 10 in strength or something). It's overly complex and attempted to merge a fallout 4 skill tree progression with skyrim and it failed miserably at both. The story is okay. It's nothing excellent. The sub missions range from tedium to actually interesting. There is little to no character depth or development. V switches between a mass murdering person to someone caring about justice, sometimes in the same mission. I don't get why killing people who didn't kill people is fine in almost cases but then it comes up and V tends to go "BUT JUSTICE". it's jarring. The additional characters have no depth but some drive. It still has romance options based on physical characteristics that make no sense when any body type can match any voice option and even robots get lap dances from other robots. The "sex scenes" are straight out of mass effect. You get access early to NCPD fights. I guess the police hire mercenaries or something. They are the way you make money. Money is a massive constraint right up to the point it isn't. They range from fun and exciting to a grinding chore. There is little to no explanation to street cred, how that translates to a number, how much time passes before brain thing happens, or really why brain thing doesn't happen when you rush off for days. It feels like they needed an editor. Tighten up the side missions. Give V a consistent morality compass. Make lethal and non lethal matter. Have shops sell the same items, and bring depth to the people. Also, for the love of God make one of these people happy. It's just misery all the time. Oh yea. The graphics are okay. They are absolutely nothingind blowing on the ps5. They do work. Most the glitches I encounter are floating people in wierd positions. Sometimes the game crashes. For a game this large and complex, it is understandable.

It's impossible to follow. The acting is excellent. The casting was spot on. The story was a mess. It felt like it wanted to be the Godfather buy just wound up being a tangled mess.