Bumping just cause I jumped back into the game finally and spring for Phantom Liberty which I'm installing now. Previously when the game came out I only had a PS4 and while it wasn't as rough for me performance wise as some seemed to have it, I played right up until the last few story quests and it still wasn't ideal.
Once I got a gaming PC I grabbed the game when it was half off but only played enough to test how much performance I could draw out of my system. For whatever reason I couldn't bring myself to start over.
Now I have and I'm reminded that despite all the warts, the base game is still special in its own right even if a lot of the early promises made remain undelivered. The full set of updates have done a lot to smooth out the experience so what you get if starting fresh right now is an engaging set of stories in a interesting fresh world with fun combat mechanics if you really invest in the right builds. And Night City is an impressive open world.
I would say that the cops aggroing you while you help them fight gangs is still an "issue" in the game (saw that complaint above) but I feel like you can chalk that up to "that would definitely happen in real life though, you don't have the same authority to shoot criminals as the cops" and beyond that I do wish there was a little more slice of life interactivity with the world besides just listening in on random voice acted NPC conversations and fighting random gang members in instances that aren't tied to gigs or sidequests. But that's getting back to expecting too much from what current hardware and programming can handle.
I think that's what eats at me, knowing an open world like this can be so filled with possibilities and the game delivers more than most, but there's still a limit to what you can reasonably get/hope for.
Anyway, I think with the updates stabilizing the game it's not a GOAT title by any means but it's a masterpiece in its own way and I'm hoping Phantom Liberty is indicative of how great a sequel can be now that CDPR has had plenty of time to learn from their mistakes.