The hype train set up Cyberpunk 2077 as the game of the generation years before its debut. It was not, but it’s still a perfectly fine game, even great. In fact, currently, the title is growing on Steam, with over 25K concurrent daily players. You could be one of these or be over its world. In any case, other games like Cyberpunk 2077 could fill the gap you’re missing.
Selecting Games Like Cyberpunk 2077
CD Projekt Red took many years to craft the experience. They clearly needed more time given the game’s release state, though. After all, Cyberpunk 2077 is a massive title in every aspect that matters. We’re displaying these “aspects” below. We believe games like Cyberpunk 2077 would feature a mix or a twist of its elements:
Genre: This is an open-world action-adventure RPG set within a cyberpunk world. Open-world: The original setting is Night City and its outskirts. It’s a megapolis full of traders, neon lights, crime, vehicles, and loot. Story-driven plot: The story follows mercenaries V and Johnny Silverhand in a life or death situation. Branching paths: You’ll find game-altering decisions leading to branching paths on the main quest. It leads to various unique final missions and endings. Characters: V, Jhonny, and other characters have formidable voices, motion-capture acting, and story arcs. Your choices decide their fates. Romances: Similarly, there’re romantic options, but it depends on your gender. Even so, you can choose your friends and your allies.Side Content: There’s tons of side content. Some of it fetch or boss quests. Others include fully-fledged multi-part stories.Avatar: V, the protagonist, has a default look (male or female). You can customize your own look.Initial Story: Additionally, you pick a background story, which determines your starting mission and some choices along the journey. Hacking: As a cyberpunk game, the “magic” system is “hacking” your enemies. You unlock hacking abilities by looting or buying chips.Enhancements: Another cyberpunk element is how you can install upgrades in your body. These range from defensive bonuses to gorilla arms.Combat: You’re free to fight how you like, but combat is fast. You can combine a weapon arsenal with melee weapons, hacking abilities, and stealth.Exploration: You can explore the city at your own will, either by foot or by vehicle. You can’t interact with most places or enter most buildings, though.Driving: The city is vast, so you can steal or buy cars to drive around. You can also listen to various radio shows with original music and news as you drive. Character Progression: You can level up to earn skill points, unlock and upgrade skills and passive buffs, or find and upgrade gear. Skill Trees: You earn XP points for each skill by doing specific actions. Leveling up a skill tree makes its skills available for you to purchase with a skill point.Loot: You can loot firearms, crafting resources, and scraps you can sell. The title heavily relies on loot and swapping or upgrading your guns constantly.Crafting: The crafting system is small. By upgrading the proper trees, you can craft and upgrade weapons, or craft medical kits, grenades, and similar.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a comprehensive action-adventure RPG. It’s more than a usual run-drive-and-gun criminal experience; it’s a fully-fledged open-world adventure and an RPG title. Overall, games like Cyberpunk 2077 should be fun and heavy on action. That means we can look across many genres for similar characteristics, so not all of our games will have a cyberpunk theme.
Games Like Cyberpunk 2077
Dragon Age: Origins
Our first pick is not a shooter, not an action-adventure game, and not a cyberpunk-themed title either. Instead, it’s one of the best RPG titles of its generation. Bioware’s Dragon Age: Origins had a special ingredient no other games have replicated since. You create an avatar by picking a race, a class, and a name, which dictates your origin. The origin is an “introductory” quest that goes for hours and determines the rest of your Dragon Age campaign. DA: Origins introduces a high-medieval fantasy with branching paths and four possible endings. As for the plot, you’re to become a Gray Wander, a warrior capable of destroying the Archdemon leading the Blight, an invasion of orc-like creatures. For combat, you play in third-person by selecting your enemies and using your abilities from the action bar. There’s also an in-game menu with a complex set of options to customize the behavior of your 3 AI companions during combat. Alternatively, you can pause combat to issue commands. Lastly, the game features many skill trees, interactive companions, various hub cities, multiple dungeons, boss combats, and the possibility of romancing your AI companions. That said, there’s no open world. Instead, you choose missions from your hub (your camp) and go to linear areas until you complete the quest-line.
Sleeping Dogs
There’s a reason why the cyberpunk setting looks so much like Hong Kong. Also, there’re many reasons why we choose Sleeping Dogs, a hidden and underrated gem. Like Cyberpunk 2077, this is an open-world action RPG title. You play as Wei Shen, a lethal undercover cop taking down the Triad mafia from the inside. First, though, you’ll need to prove yourself to the organization in brutal criminal activities. And, naturally, you can upgrade various skill trees, but each requires different activities to upgrade, like finding NPCs, collectibles, or completing quests. So, part of the game feels like a GTA offspring. You drive, run, shoot, and fight. Here’s where the unique part comes from, which hails from its unique setting. You use martial arts for melee combat, as well as firearms. Moreover, the combat system feels very arcade, like an Arkham Knight title. The game is also a sandbox. Hong Kong is vast, exotic, busy, and dangerous. You can complete side quests, go to illegal races, participate in martial arts combats, karaoke, bet in cock fights, etc. But if you follow the story, though, you’ll find heavy moments, the best events, and writing the game offers. Lastly, the Definitive Edition includes all of the game’s 24 DLCs, plus enhancements on the visual and audio departments. You’ll be able to play the gritty cop drama.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The third part of the Witcher saga is a story-driven third-person action-adventure RPG. It has an open-world design, a massive main story, fully-fledged side content, and plain fun combat. You’re Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher, member of a guild that hunts monsters in the world. You’re on a personal quest, though, which is finding Ciri, your adopted daughter. Along the way, you’ll make moral choices leading to branching paths, endings, and cinematics. Completing the quests takes you to various open-world maps to complete errands to get information. You’ll also need money, which mostly comes by defeating monsters from Polish mythology and folklore. There’re also side pleasures, like adult entertainment, card games, fist fighting, and horse races. That said, the combat is gruesome but slow-paced. You can slash, parry, dodge, use magic, potions, grenades, a crossbow, and magic. You can also level up to unlock skills, buy weaponry, and improve your gear. Like Dragon Age, the Witcher is a high fantasy world. It’s full of conflict, but you’re to remain indifferent as a Witcher. Because of this, you’ll uncover the depth and complexity of its characters, main story, side stories (with multi-part quests), locations, factions, and races.
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition
The Legendary Edition is a 4K remaster of the entire ME trilogy, plus all of its DLCs. It would allow you to play the whole story of Commander Shephard, a comprehensive action RPG sci-fi adventure. In the future, you play as a human commander you can customize. You pick a class, a background, and enter a three-part story. The choices you make on the missions may carry over to the end. It influences what happens to your companions and the races they represent. As for the plot, you lead a crew of aliens and humans against an ancient threat. You’re to defeat the Reapers and ancient AI race that comes back every 50 million years to the Galaxy to destroy all sentient life. You can choose the missions at any order from your hub (the ship), but the tasks themselves are linear. Then, combat relies on using skills and an arsenal of weapons from cover. There’s also the ability to issue commands to your AI companions. You recruit companions along the journey. You can take two of them on every mission – companions have different skills and weapons. Lastly, the character progression system is different in every game. It feels greatly unique, mixing an original magical system with hacks, tools, gadgets, weapons, and armor types.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Deus Ex was first to capture the cyberpunk setting. I mean a near future where humanity has created a lawless and oppressive society ruled by technology, corruption, and corporations. Mankind Divided is the best part of the Deus Ex saga. In the year 2029, mechanically-enhanced humans are outcasts, renegades of society. You play as Adam Jensen, a covert operative on a mission to save a world that hates his “kind.” You have an enhancement system similar to Cyberpunks. You also have an arsenal of sci-fi weapons, augmentations, stealth, melee takedowns, and cybernetic tools. You also level up to unlock further skills. Additionally, you can hack doors, computers, and other machines to access areas. So, Mankind Divided is an action RPG and a first-person shooter with stealth as part of its core gameplay. That said, you can buy and install augmentations from vendors. Likewise, these range from damage upgrades to the ability to jump great heights and resist great falls. Lastly, there’re interactive NPCs, main quests, and tons of side content. It has a semi-open design, as the full city map is available. Still, you can only visit the area where you’re completing a mission.
Surge 2
What do you get by mixing a cyberpunk setting with Dark Souls-like combat? That’s Surge and Surge 2. In particular, we recommend the sequel, a great improvement upon the first entry. You’re a plane crash survivor, finding your way in Jericho City. The sci-fi city is in chaos, as robots enforce Martial law, and a dark nano storm is looming over the horizon. The setting delivers a third-person action RPG game with a semi-open design. You explore areas and combat with a mix of melee weapons, skills, cybernetic implants, drones, and more. You can slash, shoot, dodge, parry, attack, use your tech skills, and much more for combat. So, the character progression is vast and quite fun. The game delivers many options to develop your character. Thinking through your progress is crucial, as combat is tough and brutal. More importantly, enemies drop powerful loot like implants. Overall, The Surge 2 is an interesting mix of sci-fi, RPG, and souls-like elements. And if you like it, you can always try the original title, which is quite similar.
Transistor
Transistor is an indie title that combines cyberpunk elements, hand-drawn scenarios, and superb sci-fi music. The result is a sci-fi action RPG across a stunning city. You play as Red, a singer in the city Cloudbank. After a mechanical force attacks you, you find the Transistor, a mysterious great-sword. You start a journey to discover the mysteries of the weapon, the voice within the sword, and the identity of your attackers. The game happens from an isometric point of view. You travel through a series of semi-open locations and fight against robotic enemies. Combat uses a combination of real-time hack & slash and frozen planning known as “Turn().” The character progression is complex as well. You earn experience points to unlock “Functions” (your skills). You equip these on active skill slots, passive skill slots, or upgrade other Functions. Lastly, you can configure and customize “Transistor” with many Function combinations. Transistor comes from Hades’ creators, one of the best dungeon-action-RPGs / rogue-like titles of recent memory. Like Hades, Transistor packs addictive, action-packed gameplay, vibrant artwork, gorgeous music, and a deep story.
The Ascent
Like Cyberpunk 2077, The Ascent captures the essence of a cyberpunk world to perfection. It’s gorgeous but also dirty, full of neon lights, dark alleys, corruption, and greed. The game uses a 3D isometric style, though. This is an action-shooter RPG, a twin shooter with a top-down perspective. You move your character with a stick (or the mouse) and aim with the other stick (or the keyboard). Moreover, the game has an open-world map. The world’s multi-level city hub has various entrances to interconnected combat areas. You can explore these areas, but they don’t level with you. It means you may overextend yourself and enter a dangerous place full of mobs that may one-shot you. For combat, you can equip two weapons you can swap, launch grenades, and install two augments for extra cybernetic skills. You can also hack machines, computers, and doors for additional access. Additionally, you can level to unlock skills on various trees, and find, buy, or upgrade gear. Lastly, even though it’s an indie game, the story is rich and deep. However, there’s no voice-acting in the game. Instead, you read through dialogue and hear characters doing “blargs” and “blrogs” to simulate the voices of the aliens living in the world.
Fallout 4
Fallout 4 and Cyberpunk 2077 are quite similar. For example, both games had a huge hype around their release. In particular, Fallout 4 has over 18K daily players on Steam, a massive number for an old single-player title. Fallout 4 uses many Western RPG conventions. It’s a first-person game with an open world full of loot. You level up and upgrade stats and skills. You find and upgrade weapons and armor to become endlessly powerful. You also have a dialogue wheel to choose your answers and questions. Additionally, you make choices regarding which questlines to follow, depending on the faction you choose to help. The plot follows a father who woke up in a nuclear shelter 100 years after the atomic war. Your wife is dead, and your son is missing, so you start a journey to find your son and find revenge. You can explore and fight in first-person or third-person. Combat is in real-time, but you can also use VATS, a turn-based system that allows you to choose and aim your attacks. Exploring the world is a fight for survival, even more so in Survival mode as you need to manage thirst, hunger, sickness, and fatigue. Lastly, a building system allows you to use the scrap you gather to build and develop settlements. Here, other NPCs can live and produce water, food, and scrap for you. You can use their junk to craft weapon mods, armor mods, and other items.
Ghostrunner
Ghostrunner it’s a first-person action-platformer with RPG elements. You run across 17 linear missions across a cyberpunk megastructure as you slash enemies with lighting-fast melee moves. You’re in Dharma Tower, humanity’s last shelter after a world-ending war. You have to climb from bottom to top to take your revenge on the Keymaster. The story is not quite deep, but it’s well-told, well-acted, and features an incredible OST. AS you go from top to bottom, you’ll have to overcome many obstacles. These include enemies, jumping puzzles, traversal puzzles, and a combination of all. You’re a blade fighter, a sci-fi ninja capable of slicing through enemies and dodging bullets. As you go on, you’ll be able to upgrade your character to unlock more skills and award yourself with more tools to defeat your enemies. Lastly, the combat is very fast and intense. It relies on one-hit / on-kill mechanics for everyone (including you). However, you have superior mobility and violent skills.
Dying Light 2 Stay Human
Dying Light 2 is an action-adventure RPG title with an open-world design and first-person perspective. In essence, gameplay revolves around melee combat and traversal parkour. You play as Aiden, an outsider looking for his sister on The City. This is one of the last human settlements, survivors of a virus that turns humans into zombies. Instead of a Cyberpunk setting, the game has a ruined civilization plot. Technology is almost gone, and so you resort to makeshift melee weapons that break and have no means of repair. Moreover, there’re two main dwindling factions, and your choices determine their ultimate fate. Here, you level up your parkour or combat tree depending on your actions. You also level up your character to earn a skill point for your trees. Lastly, you level up stamina and health with special collectibles, making skills available. All in all, it’s a similar progression system to Cyberpunk, but much smaller. Lastly, the game has an open world full of the genre’s conventions. You unlock areas as you progress the story, and these areas have dungeons, bandit camps, safe zones you can unlock, gear, and more.
Half-Life: Alyx
Half-Life: Alyx is a VR sci-fi horror first-person shooter. Even though it’s not an RPG title, we believe Cyberpunk fans could find something to love on the oppressive and ruined City 17. As a sci-fi story, you’ll use an arsenal of weapons to defeat aliens, machines, and monsters in a post-apocalyptic and futuristic setting. It happens in VR, though, so movement relies on the point-and-teleport mechanic, proper to the platform. You play as Alyx Vance, a character present in Half-Life 2. It’s also a prequel to the second entry in the saga. Either way, you’re the founder of a resistance that combats The Combine, an alien race that controls the planet. The universe is immensely rich, full of sound effects and characters. There’s also a physics system that allows you to interact with almost anything in the environment. At the same time, the engine forces you to make specific hand gestures for many in-game actions (like reloading or using a healing station). As a plus, the game includes a tool that allows players to build their own environments. So, with the Source 2 engine, you could develop your maps and share them with the community on the Steam Workshop.
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst
2008’s Mirror’s Edge made a huge impact on release. For example, it showcased how to properly have parkour in a game from a first-person perspective. The sequel didn’t reach the same critical success, but it’s still a fine futuristic first-person action game. You play as Faith, a free runner fighting for freedom in Glass city. This is a high-tech location hiding terrible corruption, secrets, and treachery. You play as Faith, a free runer fighting for freedom in Glass city. This is a high-tech location hiding terrible corruption, secrets, and treachery. The game also uses a Focus system, a free-running gauge you earn. It’s an active buff that makes you more powerful, and it’s an important stat to micro-manage as you explore. Lastly, the combat is plain fun and fast. You use your momentum to land kicks, punches, throws, and similar. You also outmaneuver your opponents for back kicks, stuns, dodges, and counters.
Cloudpunk
Cloudpunk is a narrative-heavy adventure game set in a futuristic and open-world megapolis. You play a Rania, a newcomer working as a car-delivery messenger, looking for the illicit delivery company Cloudpunk. There’s no combat in the game. Instead, you interact with the characters in 2D and then drive a hoover vehicle in 3D as you work. Along the way, you’ll uncover the deep story the game has to offer. So, the title works mostly as a story-rich interactive experience. You’ll face many moral choices representing the illusion of choice, believing you can force change on a world ruled by money and corporations. Even so, your actions lead you to various unique endings. It means the story is open-ended and relies on indie exploration mechanics. The city is vertical, full of neon lights, and brimming with advertising spots at every corner. Overall, Cloudpunk is a great choice for fans of the Cyberpunk genre. It falls short on gameplay mechanics and doesn’t have any action. Nevertheless, it won’t bother you if you enjoy the cinematic genre.
Observer: System Redux
Like Cyberpunk 2077 and Ghostrunner, Observer comes from a Polish developer. Unlike those titles, this one is much slower, as it relies on detective work. Remember Cyberpunk’s brain dances? Arguably, it was a very cool mechanic, just a bit boring after your first playthrough. Well, on Observer, you play as a neural investigator in the fictional city of Krakow in 2084. So, gameplay happens by using the Dream Eater mainframe. It allows you to dive into the memories of criminals and victims to solve crimes. Here, you’ll interact with the environment to find clues. There’s also a deep character arc. The more you dwell in memories, the more your character loses its own personality. The main voice comes from deceased actor Rutger Hauer, who portrayed replicant Roy Batty in Blade Runner. System Redux is a slow-paced detective title with a cyberpunk theme. There’s no action and no combat. However, there’s a deep story you can unfold over time.
