Like Final Fantasy 14, how Cyberpunk 2077 became one of the biggest comeback stories in video game history

Final Fantasy 14 and Cyberpunk 2077 have more in common than one might think from the outset. Despite one being an MMO with 27M+ registered users and Cyberpunk being an intense drama set in the far future as a single-player story, both games were doomed to failure at launch until major changes were made. Now, the two titles enjoy more success than ever before.

Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty expansion and 2.0 update are doing a great deal to rehabilitate the game’s status in the public eye, but that’s not all. Both titles' development teams had a drive to fix what was wrong and right the ship.

Thankfully, they succeeded - nobody likes to see a game fail.

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What caused Cyberpunk 2077 and Final Fantasy 14’s initial downfall?

There weren't many fun things about FF14 1.0 (Image via Square Enix)

Final Fantasy 14 (FF14) rode in on the back of Final Fantasy 11 (FF11), improving what was already there - to a degree, anyway. Like FF11, it had a baffling, incomprehensible UI. When it came to graphics, it was in a similar boat. It wasn’t hideous, but it wasn’t much better than the previous MMO they were trying to iterate upon.

The game’s UI also seemed to lag. In general, the title was incredibly slow, from combat to simply moving around. The textures and character models weren’t bad, but it just felt like something was missing visually.

FF14 also carried with it a wealth of bugs and glitches, making it feel borderline unplayable at times. Final Fantasy 14, thankfully, managed to avoid this fate being permanent.

Cyberpunk 2077 - (2020) 1.0 VS (2022) 1.6 - Comparison byu/PenetratorGod incyberpunkgame

Cyberpunk 2077’s story was a pretty tragic one as well. Despite promises of "no crunch," it appeared that promise was broken. Months of crunch and not having an adequate team to check for bugs and glitches made the game launch into an unplayable mess. Nearly every person I talked to had some kind of awful experience.

In fact, my housemate at the time encountered a bug we could only call "Arborvision." No matter where he looked in the world, he saw a vast environment filled with trees in his background. It was playable, but it was infuriating. These things shouldn’t happen. The game was broken in ways that made it hard to explain.

There was intense lag, with game-breaking bugs everywhere, and many systems just didn’t work right. Cyberpunk 2077 was so bad that Sony removed it from its stores completely until the game was in a playable state.

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How both Final Fantasy 14 and Cyberpunk 2077 overcame their struggles and became major success stories

Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn improved upon the original failed design in every conceivable way (Image via Square Enix)

Out of nowhere, Naoki Yoshida, also known as Yoshi-P, came in to fix the game and set things right. Final Fantasy 14 was made free-to-play while they worked on a new version of the game: FF14: A Realm Reborn. The most important thing Square Enix did at this time was listen to their fanbase.

He drafted an idea for a new version of Final Fantasy 14 that would also serve as a mainline entry in the franchise instead of feeling disconnected. If it were just fixing the story, that could’ve been done with the then-current engine. Yoshi-P himself spoke to us in an exclusive interview about some of the changes he planned at the time:

"But these problems could’ve been reworked without rebuilding the base systems of the game and its servers. After I took over FFXIV and earnestly investigated its issues for about two months, that was when I realized the game needed a “rebirth.” I created a game design draft for an ideal mainline entry in the FINAL FANTASY series that would also be an MMORPG, compared that with the existing original FFXIV, and investigated what adjustments would be necessary to approach that ideal."

When it was time, the old world was destroyed in a fiery cataclysm, and A Realm Reborn took over. Final Fantasy 14 was now a beautiful MMO with a rich story, tons of content to get lost in, and, best of all, it was easy to play. The UI didn’t feel like a maze, and people could easily come together to challenge dungeons, trials, and raids.

1.5 was such a massive improvement, making the game "playable" for many, us included (Image via CDPR)

It’s hard to say what Cyberpunk 2077’s developers exactly did to mend the fences, but an important thing was putting less importance on the previous generation’s consoles. A wealth of bug fixes and improvements came over several patches, and with patch 1.5, the game came to the modern PlayStation 5 again. The current generation devices were able to play the game in a much more stable state.

That isn’t to say it was free of bugs, but they were far and few between. In my review, I called it "What Night City should have been," and I stand by that statement. It was playable, I encountered very few issues, and none of them were game-breaking. By taking their time and fixing the problems that were there, Cyberpunk 2077 became what it should have been at the start: A success.

There's a bug that lets you pull out your gun while talking to Claire, allowing you to casually murder everyone in Afterlife without anyone paying you any attention byu/Eamonsieur incyberpunkgame

Perhaps the biggest culprit was rushing to get the game out - that and last-gen console editions probably didn’t help the game’s look and feel. Now, the Phantom Liberty expansion is out, with many, including our own Angshuman, calling it a masterclass, saying, "Phantom Liberty is a testament to what Cyberpunk 2077 was due to achieve or maybe could have achieved."

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These aren’t the only games that have overcome huge adversities to ultimately become successful, but they are easily two of the most popular failures that became megastars. The future is bright for both Cyberpunk 2077 and Final Fantasy 14.