40 hours into Cyberpunk 2077 and there are moments that I’m totally immersed in CDPR‘s universe. The art-design, music and writing all show glimpses of brilliance.

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There have been some real punch-in-the-gut moments in the story, and the environments that the story are built into are straight-up beautiful.

But the real magic happens throughout the main storyline rather than exploring the intoxicating but barren open-world.

Should you buy Cyberpunk 2077 on the Xbox Series X? Relax your expectations and there is still hours of fantastic content in CP2077.

Disclaimer: I’m playing on an Xbox Series X, relatively bug-free, and despite the screen fuzz, performance is a-okay.

First up, the problem that has been bugging the community since the launch of the game. Performance. So far, in just over 40-hours of gameplay, I’ve seen three NPCs T-pose and experienced two straight-to-dashboard crashes.

Audio glitches are a pain as well, with extremely loud vehicles sometimes interrupting crucial story moments, and the combat AI goes from getting one-shot by a sniper rifle to watching a whole group of gangers stumble over each other and glitch through walls.

Is this a make-or-break factor on Xbox Series X? No. Black Ops Cold War wouldn’t even let me play this weekend due to a literal game-breaking bug, and CDPR, I believe, will offer more than Treyarch ever will in remedying these problems.

There’s no denying it – Cyberpunk 2077 is one pretty game

Take The Witcher 3 as an example. When it launched it was a buggy mess. Performance was shocking, truly shocking, and I’m not just talking about Roach mounting a random shed and getting stuck up there.

It took CDPR about a year to flesh out the major issues, improve performance by up to 80% in some areas, and totally rework the game’s skill system and movement mechanics.

With the prospect of their entire reputation on the line – which was, by the way, glowing from the success of TW3 – CDPR will not let Cyberpunk 2077 rust away in some gonk’s bin.

Should this excuse the total disaster this game is on last-gen consoles? Absolutely not. The company’s handling of this entire fiasco has been quite frankly embarassing for a studio of their size.

All this trouble with refunds and not informing MS or Sony about it is just the sprinkling of fried ants on top of a pretty disgusting insect-sythentic pizza.

But for the time being, the Xbox Series X version of the game runs…well, pretty okay. And I’ve enjoyed it. A lot.

I had no great expectations about this game and I’m pleasantly surprised. There’s been a couple of times I’ve lost track of the clock, chasing after one more side job…

However, there’s no doubt the game needs work. It should have been left in the oven for another 6 months. At least.

The game feels like it’s littered with placeholder mechanics, from the dodgy police spawning AI to the lack of activities to experience around the city.

I have no doubt that there will be more added to Cyberpunk 2077. Being able to cut Geralt’s hair was a free DLC added later to The Witcher 3, you have to remember.

This is a game you’d probably enjoy right now if you like a good story and gameplay, but it may well be worth waiting for an Enhanced version in a year’s time if you’re keen on saving money and your time.

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To sum up: if you were looking for an immersive open-world – which CDPR did actually 100% promise – Cyberpunk 2077 is more like a beautiful Action-Adventure game, with a spattering of RPG skill trees, set on rails through an high-octane story.