I think the game's writing shines with the relationship development between Johnny and V. The gameplay was distinctly lacking though I did play it 2 times in a row to 100% around release with no major patches, the bugs and the horrible driving started to really wear on me and the combat eventually felt very stale. The most interaction I had with the world was doing the random combat areas strewn about. I only ever once fought off the police and I think it's because I was in a location where they weren't allowed to spawn from anywhere but outside a single door where I could then funnel them through, every other time I pissed them off they'd just pop into existence and fuck my shit up. The choices only really existed in the first mission and I while my first playthrough I did try to RP as close as I could to a nomad I did find that it was quite nice with how the game sometimes let me remark on that stuff, especially on the nomad mission line. Playing through as a corpo the next run though V acts almost exactly the same and it just ended up being super jarring.

I do agree that the game has gotten to the point where people performatively hate on it because it's the thing to do, it has a lot of good going for it if CDPR can just make the game more fun to play. The plot is decent enough, it really doesn't recognize what the punk part of cyberpunk is and I feel like any of the anti-capitalist message that is in the game comes through the setting that was premade and not through CDPR's stuff. Interacting with Johnny has some really interesting aspects as long as you 100% the game and you're able to experience the progression as much as possible rather than just rushing and being surprised that he's suddenly less harsh.