Been playing this game for weeks. I completed it and then started a new game.
The game's story is excellent, but it absolutely does not justify the tedium it makes you endure to experience it.
In a 40 minute sitting, I'd spend the entire thing simply having characters dialogue at me. What's the point of the open world then? Car chases are scripted so that you don't even have to fire a single shot. The enemies will just eventually blow up. 70% of dialogue choices are just for roleplay and don't change a thing or make extremely minor changes. The combat and shootouts are mid.
Act 1 is a chore to get through on replay. There are so many touches they could have added to make it interactive. The Flathead robot mission... why not let us pilot the bot in first-person to do all the tasks, like a stealth minigame? I can think of a few games that let you do something similar. Instead, it is 20 or more steps that are essentially "look at this object and wait."
The best part of the game for me was the middle, where the plot becomes more elaborate, evocative and the relationships with Judy, Panam, Johnny etc develop. But even there the game was navigating me through a seedy open world in order to show me glorified cutscene after cutscene. Then shootouts that were really nothing special.
Witcher 3 was dialogue heavy, nuanced and compelling. It had tedium, but I never felt like the open world was superficial or that the tedium overshadowed the rest of the game. Side tasks like Gwent or contracts were fun and absorbing. The most boring expositional bit was using Witcher sense to explore, but even then at least you were interacting with your surroundings more, not just sitting there being talked at.
Did anyone else feel this way?
Cyberpunk is a great game, it has a great story that is marvelous told. That is the games biggest strength and one of its biggest limitations too. Heavy story driven games like cyberpunk don't mix very good with a open world with its many detractions and side quests. If a game has a strong story that will capture the player, making side quests and open world design a burden, or into something that gets ignored.
Logically viewed everything that V would do after having Jonny implanted in his/her brain should be laser focused on the task to learn more about it and to find a cure or solution. There should be no driving around and playing mommy or daddy for some freaked out cabs or other side quests. Yes, doing side quests could be explained as a way to get resources for the main tasks, but as those side quests are completely optional there is nothing really backing that explanation up.
So you either have to ignore a life threatening condition to play side quests or ignore that huge part of the game and fixate on the main quest.
Cyberpunk has no real "sandbox" moment because the open world really only opens up after you get the world largest cyber brain virus implanted deeply.