Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition review: all-time great RPG finally arrives on the Mac

Best Prices Today: Cyberpunk 2077 (Mac)

Cyberpunk 2077 had a famously troubled launch back in 2020 – the game got good reviews, but was plagued by a variety of bugs and technical glitches. The developers at CD Projekt Red didn’t give up, though, and issued a series of updates over the next couple of years that fixed most of the game’s technical problems. The Phantom Liberty expansion in 2023 finally allowed the game to achieve its true potential, and Cyberpunk 2077 went on to sell more than 30 million copies, making it one of the best-selling games of all time.

Now CD Projekt Red has made Cyberpunk: 2077 available for the Mac—on the App Store, Steam, and Epic Games Store – what could possibly the biggest ever gaming launch for the Mac.

The Mac version costs a rather hefty $82.90/£69.99 when bought on the Mac App Store, but that’s for the Ultimate Edition that includes both the original game and the Phantom Liberty expansion. However, the game is also available on Steam, Gog and other online stores, where you can buy the base game for around $60/£50, or pay $83/£69 for the Ultimate Edition. And, thankfully, people who already own the PC version of the game on Steam or Gog can also download the Mac version as well, without having to buy it separately.

As the name suggests, the game is set in the year 2077, and takes place in Night City – “a megalopolis, obsessed with power, glamour and body modification”. Clearly inspired by Blade Runner, Night City is a feast for the eyes, all neon lights, seedy back alleys and smoke-filled bars. The first-person viewpoint initially suggests that Cyberpunk is a relatively straightforward FPS shoot ‘em up, but it’s actually a deep and challenging role-playing game, and it’s nice to see an RPG that is bold enough to step into the future rather than just relying on the tired old fantasy clichés of dungeons and dragons.

Your character – who can be male or female – is a hacker simply known as V, and you start the game by choosing one of three ‘lifepaths’ that fill in V’s background. You can assign experience points to attributes such as intelligence, reflexes, technical ability and ‘cool’, with each attribute giving you access to different skills that you can develop throughout the game. And, of course, there are plenty of body modifications and upgrades that you can collect along the way too.

It’s a shame that there aren’t any preset character builds to help you get started, so you may end up restarting the game a couple of times before you settle on a character that suits you. However, the opening section of the game acts as a tutorial that introduces the main controls, and the futuristic setting means that V can use a VR simulation within the game as a kind of tutorial-within-a-tutorial that helps you get started with combat, stealth, and computer hacking skills.

The main game starts when V is sent on a mission to steal a prototype chip called the Relic, but then ends up with the Relic implanted inside his own head instead. And it turns out that the chip stores the digital personality of a dead anti-corporate rockstar called Johnny Silverhand (played by Keanu Reeves). It might sound kind of cool sharing your noggin with Keanu Reeves, but Johnny soon starts to take over, forcing you to find a way to save your own personality before it gets overwritten and replaced by Johnny (there’s also a guest appearance from Idris Elb in the Phantom Liberty expansion too).

In addition to that main quest, Night City itself provides a huge open world that you can explore along the way. It has a great sense of atmosphere, and you can visit different districts, such as the coastal resort of Pacifica, or the crime-riddled Dogtown. There’s a varied cast of characters that you can meet – and sometimes romance – and plenty of jobs that you can pick up in order to pay for a few upgrades and modifications, or maybe treat yourself to a new car.

There are few games on the Mac that create the same sense of freedom as you explore the world of Night City, and you can spend hours simply exploring before you decide to tackle the main quest. Unsurprisingly, the action can get pretty violent, and there’s lots of bad language too, so Cyberpunk 2077 definitely isn’t suitable for younger gamers.

The team at CD Projekt Red recently introduced updates for The Witcher 1 and 2 that run on Apple Silicon, and they’ve done a good job with the Mac version of Cyberpunk 2077 too. They say that it will run even on Macs with a basic M1 processor – although the bad news is that you will need macOS 15.5 and at least 16GB of memory to run it properly (and there’s no support for Intel Macs either).

The game includes presets that adjust graphics settings for different Mac models, and there are some useful support pages for the Mac version at support.cdprojektred.com, which will help you to get the best performance from the game. I got a steady 40fps when running the game at 1,920 x1,200 resolution on my MacBook Pro with an M2 Pro chip, so you don’t need the latest, fastest Mac models to get good performance.

Should You Buy Cyberpunk 2077

It’s expensive, but Cyberpunk 2077 creates an atmospheric and exciting futuristic world for you to explore. Whether you’re hanging out with Keanu Reeves, tackling side quests, or collecting fancy cars, there are all sorts of activities to keep you busy. The varied skills and abilities you can learn will keep even die-hard RPG fans busy for weeks – and there’s not a dragon in sight.

Best Prices Today: Cyberpunk 2077 (Mac)