Cyberpunk 2077 is currently my favorite game. At this point, on current-gen consoles or a decent gaming PC, it's technically fantastic (not perfect, but better than most in terms of graphical fidelity and stability). It's not just "passable," it's gorgeous.
I would say that anyone who has not yet played it: if you liked Witcher 3 and you have any interest in a very R-rated first-person cyberpunk world, then you will like Cyberpunk 2077. The gameplay is very, very similar to the Witcher 3. It has pretty much the same strengths and weaknesses. Very interesting characters that you care about. Incredible voice acting that brings those characters to life. Great story that maintains the right levels of mystery and tension. Barely passable inventory management and character management. Most NPC characters are just scenery in the background and non-interactive (though they are a bit more interactive in Cyberpunk than in the Witcher). Solid (very good, but not spectacular) game controls. Dialog and movement are all identical. If you know how to play The Witcher 3, you know how to control and respond to almost everything in Cyberpunk 2077 (a few things are naturally unique to the cyber world).
To be very clear: the closest game to Cyberpunk 2077 and the best comparison is absolutely The Witcher 3. I see comparisons to games like GTA V and others, but none of those games have much in common with Cyberpunk 2077 other than passing details, like both are open world and have cars.
The main differences between The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077:
1. The setting. If you only like fantasy and have no interest in a semi-dystopian sci-fi future, then you may not be interested.
2. It's in the first person. I love this and much prefer this to the Witcher's 3rd person only view, though in both cases I wish they gave options for both (like the Bethesda games do). But if I had to chose one or the other, I prefer first person to third.
3. Feels like there are more pure combat (or sneak) quests in Cyberpunk than in the Witcher and fewer quests that involve extended conversations with characters. On the other hand, the main Cyberpunk quest and a small handful of side quests have a huge amount of deep dialog. In short, while I think the total quantity of quests is comparable, I think there are fewer emotionally meaningful side quests in Cyberpunk 2077 than in The Witcher 3. This would be my chief criticism and source of disappointment, because the ones that are in Cyberpunk are amazing.
4. Combat is vastly better in Cyberpunk 2077 than in the Witcher games, probably because it's all in first person. It's actually fun, if maybe too easy.
5. Driving in Cyberpunk 2077 is its own skill. I still crash a lot, unless I'm on a motorcycle (I only play on Xbox Series X, I suspect it's easier if using something other than a game controller). This is not like riding Roach and doesn't really have any direct parallel, but that would be the closest reference.
6. There are more play styles and options in Cyberpunk than Witcher. In the Witcher games, your character (Geralt) is basically a warrior. You can lean more into some styles of combat than others, but the variations are minor (to the Witcher's credit, there are a lot of different ways to use swords in the Witcher, which we don't have in Cyberpunk, at least not before the 1.6 patch, that may introduce more variation). In Cyberpunk, you can fight with guns, fight with swords, use sneaking and stealth, or use cyber attacks (effectively magic spells), and each of those is radically different from the others.
7. Night City would be vastly larger than the world in The Witcher 3 if you could go into all the buildings, but you can't. Most of Night City is scenery and not very interactive. I think this is a chief complaint for many in an open-world game, but I don't think it's a reasonable one: there is still far more to see and explore than you could in hundreds of hours of gameplay, the fact that many buildings don't open is unimportant: think of yourself in a real city in the story -- you would enter the buildings that related to your purpose, the vast majority you would just walk past and ignore. My hope is that in future Cyberpunk games we return to Night City and next time, major events happen in those other buildings that we've not used. This allows us to really learn the layout of the city over multiple games (it's so huge it would take thousands of hours to really KNOW the city), with just different places that matter in each game.
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