From Broken Launch to One of the Best RPGs Around

No game in recent memory has a story arc quite like Cyberpunk 2077 — and I don’t mean the one about V and Johnny Silverhand. I mean the real-world one: a 2020 launch so broken that Sony pulled it from its own store and CD Projekt Red offered refunds, followed by years of patient rebuilding that turned it into one of the most acclaimed RPGs of its generation. Any honest Cyberpunk 2077 review in 2026 has to be a tale of two games. So here’s both.

Then: The Launch That Nearly Sank It

Let’s not sugarcoat the history. At release, Cyberpunk 2077 was a technical catastrophe on anything but a high-end PC. Bugs ranged from funny to game-breaking, last-gen console versions ran so poorly they became infamous, and the gap between the marketing and the reality was vast. The bones of something brilliant were clearly in there, but they were buried under crashes, glitches, and features that didn’t work as promised. It’s the launch that every “wait for patches” argument now points to.

Now: One of the Best RPGs on the Market

Then something rare happened — the developers actually fixed it. Years of major updates, a substantial overhaul, and the acclaimed Phantom Liberty expansion transformed Cyberpunk 2077 into the game it was always meant to be. The version you’d download today is nearly unrecognisable from the one that shipped, and it’s genuinely excellent.

What was always great, even at launch, is finally allowed to shine: Night City. It’s one of the densest, most atmospheric open worlds ever built, a neon-drowned sprawl where the side quests are the real triumph — intimate, surprising, human stories that put most games’ main campaigns to shame. The character work is superb, and the freedom to shape V through wildly different Cyberpunk 2077 builds — a stealthy netrunner, a katana-wielding brawler, a gunslinger — means the RPG systems finally deliver on their promise. Add in the branching Cyberpunk 2077 endings that genuinely respond to your choices, and it’s a world worth losing yourself in.

Where to Play It Now

The platform question matters more here than almost anywhere, precisely because of that history. The Cyberpunk 2077 PS5 version (and current-gen Xbox and a strong PC build) is the definitive way in — it runs beautifully, looks stunning, and bears no resemblance to the last-gen disaster. The old Cyberpunk 2077 PS4 version exists but is best avoided if you have any modern option, and the game’s reach keeps growing, with a Cyberpunk 2077 Switch 2 edition bringing Night City to Nintendo hardware. Whatever you play it on, make sure it’s a current platform.

Should You Give It a Second Chance?

If you wrote it off in 2020, this is the honest pitch: games are living things, and this one clawed its way from disaster to brilliance. It should never have shipped in the state it did, and no amount of redemption fully erases that — but judged as it stands today, it’s a sprawling, gorgeous, deeply atmospheric RPG with some of the best side content and world-building in the medium. To make the transformation concrete, here’s how the two versions stack up side by side.