Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (2023)

What another awesome game (and my first DLC/addon) for a CD Projekt Red game. Now I definitely need to play the two Witcher 3 expansions because this was simply amazing.

To me, CD Projekt Red is officially in the same class as Rockstar, as I have not played a bad game yet from either developer. In fact, I've only played awesome games from them, in my experience.

Now bring on Witcher 1 remake and Witcher 4. Take my money.

Oh, and on my new RTX 5070ti (for under $1,000 thank God), this game looks and performs absolutely wonderful. What a visual feast. I am genuinely happy that Nintendo fans who will only have a Switch 2 in the future, will be able to experience this game in its entirety.

This new RTX 5070ti is off the hook, and thankfully I was able to get it for under a grand from Best Buy. But the state of video card prices and availability are still in the gutter, with scalpers and scammers, and seemingly no end to the madness.

The tech bizz is in such a turmoil and the only thing you and I can do is not give in to scalpers, and let the local people sit with their items, which forces them to return them to Best Buy and Amazon.

On that note, I was finally able to get a RTX 5070ti for a decent price from Best Buy and I love the card. I just upgraded from a EVGA 3090ti (RIP my beloved EVGA), and Cyberpunk looks absolutely fantastic, and it performs just as much.

The new DLSS 4 and Frame Gen took some time for me to get the performance and visuals right, but man, this game looks incredible compared to when I played it day ONE on Xbox One X.

4/5

Played on PC.

Enjoyed this DLC and storyline. The spy thriller theme it goes for is a great fit for Cyberpunk, and the characters are largely awesome. The new region is fairly interesting and chock full of cool side-content as well. Even more than the DLC I loved replaying the base game with all the new patches and additions - I loved Cyberpunk at launch but this was a far superior experience.

I'm a Cyberpunk apologist. I played the game at release and enjoyed it quite a bit. I think playing it on a high-end PC mitigated most of the technical issues, and I ran into very few performance problems or bugs. I loved the city, I loved the characters and the performances, I got invested in the gritty cyberpunk story.

Still, the game at launch had some gameplay issues. There was a solid foundation but they hadn't quite found the fun yet. The skill tree was a mess, certain playstyles weren't viable or fun to play on the hardest difficulty, there were annoying quality of life oversights, etc.

The 2.0 update solved all of that. The skill trees have been completely remade from the ground up, grenades and health items now recharge over time instead of being something you have to buy, throwing knives automatically return to you after a few seconds instead of having to be reequipped from the menu constantly, there are totally new skills you can get like air dash and picking people up and throwing them. It's like a whole new, much, much better game from a core gameplay and quality of life perspective.

Phantom Liberty only adds to that redemption arc, with a fantastic main story as well as surprisingly in depth and handcrafted side gigs. Some of my favorite bosses in the entire game are located within some of Phantom Liberty's side content.

Let me put it this way. My first playthrough of the game took 60 hours, I didn't finish everything (at a certain point I was just ready to be done), and I gave it 4/5 stars at the time. I started a new character for the DLC and wound up doing absolutely everything, getting all the achievements, and playing for over a hundred hours.

There's never been a better time to play Cyberpunk. If it had released in this state in 2020 it would've been an easy GOTY, and even with all the amazing games that came out in 2023 I think so far Phantom Liberty + 2.0 update is my favorite release of 2023. Granted there are some bangers I haven't gotten around to yet, but yeah...it's really good, and makes for a stark comparison to Starfield.

CD Projekt RED shows how it's done, a truly spectacular expansion, it almost feels like Phantom Liberty is the Cyberpunk game they tried to make from the beginning, before they got all overambitious on us and released a broken product.

This thing is ace all around, polished, detailed, beautiful as ever, some of the best story writing in an open world game i've ever seen, never have i made a decision in this game i was truly confident about i felt tricked and betrayed all the time, the espionage feel they were going for is unmatched, i finally related to V on a deeper level, not just as someone who's trying to survive but as a small guy, a pawn in the midst of a much bigger story and then sticking a big cyber wrench in the middle of it, fuck yeah

CDProjekt se vuelve a postular como una de las compañías con mejor política de DLCs. Phatom Liberty no es solo más contenido del juego, sino que añade gratuitamente una actualización que convierte un juego notable pero inestable en un juego mucho más sólido. Por si fuera poco, trae a algunos de los personajes más memorables, unas decisiones llenas de grises y un epílogo capaz de destrozarte y sorprenderte a partes iguales. Dogtown es un escenario algo pequeño, pero que se siente más que suficiente para la expansión, con un contenido de secundarias modesto, pero con mayor profundidad que en el juego base. Un conjunto sobresaliente que alza la media del juego.

Absolutamente recomendable.

Phantom Liberty's secret agent plot is a great addition to the Cyberpunk 2077 story, offering protagonist V another way out of their predicament through a minefield of politics, hacking, and espionage in an especially dangerous part of town. Dogtown is definitely not my favorite area in the game just to be in, but it fits well from a story and worldbuilding perspective, and the variety of stuff you do there is plenty interesting.

The mission designs try a few new things not seen in the base game, and some are cool while others are a little dull. More story-heavy sections do make up for any misfires though, with a few memorable new characters whose motives and actions can really keep you guessing. The more hectic combat encounters and some stealth(-optional) sections are generally fun, too.

Along with the new self-contained storyline comes a new ending to the game itself, assuming the player meets certain requirements, and boy is it a downbeat one in many ways, but it's very thematically appropriate and ties back in well with the nature of this story and its setting. The Phantom Liberty story and that associated ending certainly aren't 100% essential to the game, given that they're in post-release DLC, but they are good enough that they should be a part of at least one playthrough.

The base game as of the "2.0" update does feel more polished and fleshed-out than when I played it in the first couple weeks after it initially launched. Overall, though, it still feels like pretty much the same game. In my original review, I expressed confidence that once they cleaned this up and we got away from the crash from the ridiculous hype this got pre-release, people would eventually come around on it. While it still has its critics, it seems like that ended up being true when it comes to overall popular opinion.

That's in no small amount due to the clean-up job, since for many people it just wasn't in a state to be played at first, but I think it also speaks to what was already there, which for me is one of the most memorable RPGs of the last few years.

Just as with the main game, I really did not like Keanu's performance. But the new characters introduced were all really well voiced, especially Songbird. The story was pretty interesting and though I only played through once, hearing on podcasts about what other endings were possible was really neat. The soundtrack for combat in particular was really poppin... I don't recall if it was all new or from the original base game but I really enjoyed it. The new 2.0 change to the leveling system was good but I don't agree with the general sentiment that it changed a bad system into an exceptional one... the original felt mostly fine to me and this one feels perhaps slightly better but not mind blowing or anything, just good. Driving vehicles still doesn't feel very good, especially on mouse/keyboard since clicking the a or d key goes full bore that direction while a controller joystick provides more nuance. And besides, the cars are just barely even necessary for how small Dogtown is.

I also experienced some kind of GPU memory leak issue that plagued my entire playthrough. If I opened menus or the map for more than a few seconds, I would return to the game world at way less fps. And even if I avoided menus, gradually over the course of 30-60 minutes playtime, the average fps would drop from about 70 to 25. Closing the game and reopening resolved it, and perhaps even just existing to main menu and back did too. Very annoying.

I also experienced tons of visual flashing, probably not game's fault; likely some OS crap but exemplifies what's so annoying about PC gaming. NVidia has a mpo_disable.reg script that mostly (not entirely) eliminated these flashes for most of my playthrough, but towards the end they started coming back.