Reading all of the promises and speculation about Cyberpunk 2077’s release during its 2020 marketing cycle, I thought most of it was too good to be true. Usually, the more confident and hyped people are for a new triple A game, the more I think it’s not going to meet expectations. Lo and behold, I was unfortunately proven correct. Cyberpunk released to mixed reviews, with absolutely atrocious bugs and performance issues and only about half the features that were discussed in its marketing. I laughed from the sidelines as someone who wasn’t interested in the game, and continued playing Animal Crossing and Battlefield as I wound down my senior year of highschool from the comfort of quarantine.
But then, two years later, the watershed moment for many Cyberpunk fans today—the anime series, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, was released. My friends told me how good it was, and I figured there was no harm in watching it. And…goddamn. My mind was permanently and irreversibly altered. Edgerunners was a godtier show. The excellent Cyberpunk universe first developed by R. Talsorian as a TTRPG was shown to me in full force. I don’t know who at CD Projekt Red pitched Edgerunners but they better have gotten a promotion. Literally the next day, I drove to GameStop and picked up a copy of Cyberpunk for 20 bucks.
By this point in the game’s lifecycle, a lot of its bugs and performance issues had been patched out, and I was left with its amazing story (the gameplay was still rough in a lot of ways prior to the 2.0 update). The writing and worldbuilding was genuinely fantastic. I was blown away, and surprised that such a good narrative was buried under mountains of terrible reviews. I completed the main story in about 50 hours, unfortunately skipping most of the side content and closing out my save file with the Devil ending (feel free to insult me in the comments).
And in 2023, Phantom Liberty released alongside the 2.0 update and proved to many that the Blood and Wine-tier CD Projekt Red still existed. It revamped countless systems in the game and against all odds, topped the quality of Cyberpunk’s base game story (in my opinion). It is into this state of the game that I began my 2024 playthrough, determined to finish all of the side content and experience Phantom Liberty for myself.
Overall, taking into consideration Cyberpunk’s missteps on release, the quality of its core narrative and worldbuilding, and the improvement brought with Phantom Liberty, the game as a whole is an INSANELY good experience, if not fully realized. It is not what was promised, but in its current state, it is incredibly close. If you were looking for a sign to play Cyberpunk 2077, this is it. I am the sign. Please play it. There was always an amazing story with heartfelt emotion put into it.
Now bear with me because I’m going to say a lot about it.
Let’s start with the gameplay, and of its various elements (there are a lot of them), I think I’ll start with the attributes, perks, and skills—vestiges of the TTRPG. This is the first game I’ve played with points that you put into passive attributes. There are five of them: Body, Reflexes, Technical Ability, Intelligence, and Cool, all with their own gameplay style they compliment and their own skill tree (massively streamlined and improved with 2.0). This is what formulates your build for the entire game, and there are a lot of paths to go down.
Wanna obliterate enemies with machine guns, shotguns, your bare f*cking hands, and sheer force of will? Put points into Body and unlock perks like Close-Quarters Carnage to dismember enemies with buckshot. Wanna sneak around like a ninja and plant your throwing knives into three skulls before the first one hits the pavement? Put points into Cool and pick up Juggler to instantly regain your throwing knife on a headshot kill. Wanna fry opponents’ nervous systems and give a whole room of enemies cadmium poisoning at once? Put points into Intelligence and unlock Overclock to hack enemies without worrying about RAM. There are just too many perks for me to possibly give all of them the spotlight they deserve, but there are so many sick combinations and playstyles. I personally opted for a Intelligence/Cool/Tech build with throwing knives, silenced pistols, quickhacks, and Monowire.
Weapons are next, and they are again divided into several categories—with firearms being Smart (homing bullets), Tech (charged armor piercing bullets), and Power (ricocheting bullets—and melee weapons being Blunt (non-lethal), Blades (katanas and chainswords), or Knives (both melee and throwable). Aside from all the cool “delivery” methods these weapons have to impart brutal pain on others (and their interaction with cyberware and the perk trees), they just look and sound sick! All of the guns handle really well gunplay-wise, and the “feedback” you get when attacking enemies with them (screams of pain, dismemberment, the sound of splitting flesh) makes all of them feel insanely deadly. …I’m starting to sound like a psychopath, aren’t I?
Anyway, my favorites are the sleek Senkoh LX, which bears a leather grip and body as a cross between a weapon’s manufacturer and a luxury clothing brand for self-defense in style, and the Palica, a Smart sawed-off double barrel shotgun that send opponents flying when they’re hit with the impact of sentient buckshot. And of course…there’s the Malorian Arms 3516, which needs no introduction if you’ve ever played Cyberpunk 2077 yourself. That gun has probably one of the coolest reload animations in all of gaming. Badass. Special props to throwing knives, which feel (and sound) insanely satisfying to use, especially if you’ve got your Crit Chance to where they’re one shotting enemies they hit.
But seriously, the weapon animations are next level. The most interesting ones to watch are the ones that have a lot of moving parts, like the Nekomata and the Achilles, which rotate and fold in on themselves when you pull them out for the first time. Knives are similarly satisfying, as their first equip animation has you flip them around with your fingers like a balisong. And of course, no one can beat good old chamber checking with pistols and revolvers like the Unity and Overture. There’s a great mix of “technological marvel” and “normal gun” designs in this game that really sells the futuristic feel of weaponry in 2077.
Cyberware is up next. No cyberpunk story would be complete without body modification, and Cyberpunk 2077 is filled with it. You’ve got several slots for cyberware in each section of your body, like your eyes, circulatory system, or nervous system, and tons of “ripperdoc” surgeons to sell them to you. Just…don’t ask them where they got those implants. You better hope it wasn’t from the corpse in that back alley over there. Again, these implants are here for you to make your build better, but unlike perks tend to augment physical or mental abilities in much more drastic ways. For example, arm cyberware comes in four flavors: molecule thin Monowire whips, beefed up Gorilla Arms, the Projectile Launch System cannon, and forearm swords known as Mantis Blades. All four systems interact with the attribute and perk trees in different ways and further serve to diversify your playstyle.
Perhaps the most potent piece of cyberware (should you choose to utilize it) is the cyberdeck installed in your nervous system that allows you to hack enemies merely by looking at them and running a command. These “quickhacks” range from stealthy, low-cost programs like Ping (which highlights all enemies in a certain range) and Memory Wipe (which erases an enemy’s recollection of seeing you) to brazen, high-cost combat hacks like Contagion (which causes the toxic metals in an enemy’s cyberware to leach into their bloodstream, poisoning them) and Synapse Burnout (which crashes an enemy’s nervous system). The Intelligence attribute perk tree is almost solely dedicated to quickhacks and your cyberdeck, and gives a great alternative to your standard shooting and stabbing playstyle. It’s very rare that first-person shooters have more dimensions to combat than shooting and stealthing, so to see one implemented so nicely in Cyberpunk is really refreshing.
There’s certainly a lot of elements that go into combat, and describing all of them fully without descending into endless buff stacking and number crunching madness is fairly difficult. Apologies if I didn’t give one feature or other a fair shake in this review. What I wanted to get across is that there’s a lot of moving parts that all come together beautifully to make a combat experience that is tough to match. There are tons of ways to approach any one combat encounter, and it's all thanks to the myriad ways Cyberpunk has to make you the scariest motherf*cker alive.
The 2.0 update was also a great boon to combat as it revamped the perk tree, cyberware system, and weapon descriptions, changing them from a confusing mess to something that’s surprisingly easy to understand for being so complicated. A lot of the excess fat was trimmed and rebalanced to make it simpler to jump in and start making a build that’s enjoyable and effective. And perhaps most beneficial was the added ability to reallocate attribute and stat points, so you can always change your build and try something else out. Just make sure to save first!
Okay, that’s enough about the combat. Truly, the best way to understand its merits (or downsides) is to just see it for yourself. Now I’ll go into some of the non-combat related gameplay mechanics before I start talking about the story. Character customization in Cyberpunk is pretty good; there’s a lot of different settings for each facial feature. If you’re the type of person to painstakingly dress up your virtual you like a doll, you’ve got the right game. If you're on PC and also have modded character customization accessible to you, God rest your soul because there’s so many more options there you’ll never start playing the actual game. There’s a good mix of natural styles and bizarre futuristic facial features like custom irises and holographic hairstyles, and other various cosmetic additions like facial markings, tattoos, scars, and beauty marks. You can also change your character’s appearance whenever you’d like from a ripperdoc or a mirror, ensuring you don’t feel pressured to get it right on the first go.
Clothing options are various if slightly restricted to the four major fashion styles in the universe of Cyberpunk 2077: entropism (“poverty-core”), kitsch (gaudy and colorful), neo-militarism (subdued and commanding), and neo-kitsch (kitsch, but appropriated by the rich). This is one example of the worldbuilding influencing the gameplay; while it’s not overtly stated in the game itself, a great deal of the clothing items in-game feature one of these four styles. It's a really cool lore tidbit that gives the clothing choices in this game a lot of character. Gameplay-wise, you can buy them from various merchants throughout Night City, and interact with the wardrobe in your apartment to create outfits whose appearance supersedes whatever you currently have on, which is always welcome and lets you keep the stat buffs of clothing types like armor and visors without sacrificing your drip.
While I’ll wait to discuss main jobs (main story) and side jobs (sidequests) for later, I do want to highlight the various gigs and hustles you can play around Night City in your downtime. A large part of your life as a mercenary is taking freelance work, and you do that by approaching the location of said work, upon which a “fixer” calls you and tells you what you need to be doing. While the main and side jobs are more story focused, gigs are more gameplay focused and usually involve stealing something, infiltrating a location, performing a hit, or clearing out an area of gang influence. The gigs in this game have a surprising amount of substance and unique dialogue for what is essentially the second-lowest tier of side content, and they serve as a great way to fill time and enjoy combat in an in-universe way. The fixers themselves aren’t insanely deep characters, but they all have really fun personalities to see in action. Plus, some of them (like Wakako and Mr. Hands) indeed have a role in the main story. My favorite fixer is El Capitan, he’s super chill and just a great dude.
NCPD scanner hustles aren’t the best side content (more on them in the cons section), but I do like them for their environmental storytelling. Night City as a location is all kinds of exploitative and messed up, and a lot of the crimes that take place at the site of these scanner hustles shows that. Like, half of them all feature civilians trying to make it out of Night City and escape the cycle of poverty and violence they grew up in, only to fall victim to trafficking or gang activity at the finish line. It's tragic stuff.
I’m not much of a vehicle guy in games, so initially the choice of cars and bikes in Cyberpunk didn’t really matter to me all that much. For the most part I just stuck with whatever vehicles were given to me during the main story. Still, I think Cyberpunk has some pretty sleek car and motorcycle designs. My favorites are the Nazare Arch, the Yaiba Kusanagi, and of course, the Rayfield Aerondight. 2.0 also introduced vehicle combat, and THAT is what got me more interested in vehicles. The Outlaw Weiler you get from El Cap after completing his vehicle contracts (a great addition by Phantom Liberty to make use of vehicle combat) is insanely badass with its front-mounted turrets. And I’m glad vehicle quickhacks were introduced as well; it's very fun to slam on the brakes as the car you set to self-destruct speeds right past you toward a fiery grave.
The 2.0 update, in addition to all of the gameplay rebalancing mentioned previously, also introduced level scaling from enemies (as opposed to them scaling with the location you’re in), which is a boring mechanic to discuss in a review but nonetheless a crucial addition Cyberpunk was lacking. It also revamped police chases, which now escalate in difficulty using a star system like Grand Theft Auto, with the 5 star limit culminating with the SWAT-like MaxTac security force made up entirely of boss enemies endlessly deploying you until you escape or die. Glorious. I was unsure if MaxTac would be implemented in a way that made them feel like the threat they were portrayed as in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, but as soon as I got them sicced on me for the first time, my worries were put to bed. Now that’s how you implement an “unstoppable” enemy.
The last gameplay mechanic I wanted to mention favorably is a minor one—braindance analysis. A select few main story quests involve combing braindances (recordings that capture emotions and senses from the perspective of the person recording them) for clues to help solve a mystery or plan out a heist. These recordings allow you to move freely around the recorded area and analyze not only sights, but also sounds and temperature, and even let you watch in third person despite the recording being made in first person. Since we as players are pretty much already watching a recording of another individual’s (the player character) first-person experiences, having this mechanic does wonders in making braindance technology feel like more than just switching character perspectives like all video games do. It’s an insanely cool way of making the technology feel as immersive and strange to the player as it does to our character.
Alrighty, now it’s time to get into the story of Cyberpunk 2077. I will not be directly spoiling plot points, more just stressing what I like about certain quests and character developments, as well as praising the narrative overall. I guess I’ll start by saying that this game ended up being so much more than just a futuristic story in a dark universe. There are tons of themes woven together at all different points, and so many emotional moments that make you stop and reflect on what you’ve just seen play out.
The most pervasive theme is probably the juxtaposition between becoming a legend through daring heists and flashy combat, and facing the reality that life in Night City under corporation rule and the burden of technology is soul-crushing. The entire main story is about the mercenary V (your player character) dealing with the consequences of a play for fame, and what they’re willing to sacrifice to claw their way back from the brink. Such a story is chock full of moral dilemmas—all asking what are you willing to do in order to survive. Should survival come at the cost of the relationships you hold dear? Is it worth aligning yourself to those that have blood on their hands, and have entrenched themselves so deeply in the suffering of others? It’s a question V is proposed by fixer Dexter DeShawn at the beginning of the game—”Quiet life? Or blaze of glory?”—and one that they must answer by its conclusion.
All of the endings deal with this question in a different way, and all are great stories in their own right, even if what actually happens to V and their companions isn’t positive. It’s impressive how bleak some of the endings can be. My first playthrough, I got the Devil ending and…whew. I sat there watching the end credits with a thousand yard stare. I tried out the Path of Least Resistance ending this playthrough before going for my desired ending and MAN that one might actually hit deeper, especially since I did all of the side content and thus got to hear what all of V’s companions thought of their decision in that ending. My real second ending was the Sun, and while that one certainly ends more positively than Devil or Least Resistance, there is still an element of bittersweetness to it. Cyberpunk as a genre is incredibly depressing, and Cyberpunk 2077 NAILS that.
Still, the entire game isn’t all doom and gloom, though most of it is. The relationships that V forms despite their circ*mstances show a different side to Night City—a humanity buried under all the deception, chrome, and bloodshed. When your back is against the wall, it's time to see what your friends are really for. The characters that V meets are done very well; the character writing is excellent—it’s no surprise that one of the best side quests in this game involves attending a funeral and memorializing the individual that died alongside those that knew them in life (I’m referring to Heroes).
Misty, Viktor, and Jackie are top notch friends for V to have in their corner; they all care so deeply about their wellbeing. The Heist (with Jackie), Playing For Time and Nocturne Op55N1 (with Misty and Viktor) portray these characters so, so well. I can’t describe these quests in detail because of what happens in them, but they are some of my favorite main quest missions because of how they deal with death, fame, identity, and control over one’s life. In a game that's full of grotesque and explicit violence, these missions are so personal and tender with their subject material. I was very shocked at how well they portrayed those themes when I first played. In spite of everything that happens, V still has their friends (player-willing). “I don’t think…I don’t think you know just how many friends you really had.”
Panam, Judy, Kerry, and River—the four main romance options—are four more standout characters, though not romancing them doesn’t detract from their story and development in the slightest. Panam, a nomad striking out against her clan’s perceived weakness and becoming a mercenary, struggles to adapt to the individual life of Night City, and through her experiences with V, extends an offer to join a “family” of sorts. The theme of community and relationships versus individual fame perhaps resonates most strongly with her. On the other hand, braindance editor Judy’s story represents a more direct clash with Night City’s exploitative atmosphere. She loses a lot because of this city (in Pyramid Song and ESPECIALLY in Both Sides, Now) and tries to find a way out, spurred on by her experience with V.
Detective River’s questline is one of the darkest in Cyberpunk (matched by Disasterpiece, I’d say) as it concerns searching for a serial killer and raises the question if there is such a thing as justice in Night City. River is probably the weakest major character but I nonetheless have to commend the writers for creating such a disturbing questline to tie him to. Former Samurai guitarist Kerry is a late arrival story-wise, but I like that his relationship revolves around him rising past the shadow that he was left in back when he was in his band with Johnny Silverhand, and Johnny himself realizing that he never treated Kerry the way he should have.
On that note, Johnny Silverhand’s character is another amazing one, though given that he is probably the most important character besides V, I can only go so far in describing him without imparting major story spoilers. He is a rebel; the most vehemently anti-corporation individual V meets, so much so that he is seen as an extremist. He is initially very hostile to V, but during the course of the game, warms up to them and begins to take on some of V’s traits, just as V begins to understand Johnny more. Part of the reason I’m so impressed with Johnny’s character is because I f*cking HATED his ass during my first playthrough (starting to see why I ended up with the Devil ending?). He is a flawed character. His way of thinking is familiar to us as players but foreign to V, and as such there’s a great deal of friction. But V slowly grows to understand him, and realizes that he genuinely cares about the violations that Arasaka and other corps make regarding the bodily autonomy of the masses. The discussion Johnny has with V outside the Sunset Motel after Search And Destroy about Soulkiller is what solidified my appreciation of his character. “You’re denied the right to die.” “Corps have already taken the world for their own, now they’re comin’ for us.”
Takemura is also a really interesting character for his look into the “human” side of corporations—a person who truly, genuinely believes what they’re doing is right, not just what needs to be done to survive. And yet, by virtue of his affiliation with Arasaka, sometimes players grow to hate him on principle. At least for me, he’s not a bad buy, but when the chips come down in Search and Destroy, I know where my loyalties lie. The other Arasaka members V meets, like Hanako and Yorinobu are also really interesting characters, if wholly unrelatable because of their distance from the masses. It’s what makes the Devil such an interesting ending for me despite how bleak it is.
Looking at the main story from a gameplay perspective, I think the clear winner for “coolest mission” for a base game is The Heist. The “plot twist” we see in that mission is utterly f*cking mental, and the song they chose to play during that pivotal moment is killer too. I’ve gotta find out which one it is. Fighting through the tower and escaping is one hell of an adrenaline rush, and it has such a mindblowing conclusion to it. And of course, the assault V gets up to in each of the endings is crazy too, especially since we come face to face with the bane of all Edgerunners enjoyers everywhere: Adam f*cking Smasher. Bonus points to Smasher for his absolutely off the rails “cut of f*ckable meat” line being utterly hilarious and yet intimidating.
The side jobs in Cyberpunk are nothing to shy away from as well. The vast majority of them are great, but a choice few are EXCELLENT. The aforementioned Heroes might be my favorite, but that one is so important to me I basically see it as a main quest. Sinnerman might be my favorite side job that truly feels like a side quest. It’s a surreal quest that constantly has you asking “what on earth am I doing here” but invites some very poignant discussion on the commodification of religion and the exploitative nature of media in Night City, so much so that f*cking Rachel (hate her ass) is willing to facilitate the suicide of a clearly mentally distressed man. Dream On with Elizabeth and Jefferson Peralez is also a great side job for the connection it has to the pervasive Mr. Blue Eyes mystery. Violence with Lizzy Wizzy is another fun one for how off the rails. You can’t help but root for Lizzy even thought you know what she did is kinda f*cked. Her actions are truly girlboss behavior. And The Beast In Me with Claire’s races is also a standout side job, not just for Claire’s development (or lack thereof, player-willing) but also the racing minigame itself.
Two more things directly story-related to praise, and then I’ll get into the lore (oh boy). One, the voice acting for everyone is spectacular. I don’t even think there’s one character in particular that has great voice acting because all of the voice actors are amazing. The story is emotional, don’t get me wrong, but it’s the voice acting that hammers it home. Two, despite this game having dialogue choices, I think no matter what choice you pick, it never sounds out of character for V. Even though V is more or less a player avatar, they have an actual character they go through, and the dialogue choices reflect this. Everything they say feels like a natural reaction to what they’ve just experienced.
Okay, now we move to the worldbuilding and lore of the Cyberpunk universe. I’ve never played the TTRPG, so I’m not qualified to discuss it in an insane amount of detail, but the aspects of its lore represented in Cyberpunk 2077 are fantastic. There is a metric f*ck-ton of information to find out about the world, and you don’t even need to read the database to discover most of it as long as you keep your ears and eyes peeled while you play normally. Night City as a map is insanely immersive, and if it wasn’t for the one-dimensional civilian AI, I’d say it's one of the most immersive worlds I’ve ever had the privilege of playing in.
There is environmental storytelling everywhere you look, from trash piling up onto streets and under highways, to corpses lying in alleyways next to guns, civilians staring off into space as they escape reality via braindance, all of it goes to show just how terrible it really is to live in Night City. The districts all have different architecture styles and building types to reflect what their role in the city is and the class of the people living there, and all of them have their own gangs terrorizing the people there. You’ve got ritualistic body modifiers in Watson with Maelstrom, pseudo-Yakuza gangers in Westbrook with the Tyger Claws, and ignored, bloodthirsty veterans in Santo Domingo with 6th Street. All the gangs have their own ways of doing things and their own “politics” and hierarchies in the city, reflected in gigs and Streetkid lifepath dialogue choices.
Expectedly, there’s a monumental amount of advertising in Night City, and I’d wager that 90% of scenes in the game have at least some annoying ass ad going off in the background. The ads are incredibly invasive and sometimes come in at inopportune times during dialogue, which is paradoxically perfect. It's a grisly reminder of how bad advertising could get if corporations continue to gain ground and take control of physical spaces. “Drink verification can to continue” is real in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe. Ads are often sexually explicit, overly glamorous, or graphically violent, and it demonstrates a dark conclusion to the idea that provocative advertising gets people to look at it. I still get PTSD when I see a Milfguard ad come on and hear loud moaning when I’m just trying to listen to the person in front of me lol. I also really like the Jinguji ad that features a dying person wearing designer clothing with the tagline “at least you’re wearing Jinguji.” Goes to show that dying a glamorous death is valued over living in poverty…at least that's what the corporation propaganda says.
The design of technology in Cyberpunk is also super cool. Conceptually, the idea of slotting in a “shard” with data on it into a port in your neck to view data directly from your brain is very cool. Having a personal cable that you put out of your wrist to interface with various electronics is also very neat. Like combat cyberware, such technological modifications also beg the question of how far can humans go with integrating technology into themselves before they start to lose themselves. The concept of cyberpsychosis, which appears to be brought on by depersonalization through technology, features prominently in Cyberpunk and represents both a failure for society to recognize mental illness and too cavalier of an acceptance of modification. Of course, since most implants are made by corporations…kinda also means they own your body parts. I’m starting to go on a tangent here but I just really appreciate how all of the worldbuilding in Cyberpunk gets you thinking about what all of it really means. I’m glad the developers were able to facilitate this discussion amongst fans.
With all the technology, it might seem a bit weird how little the idea of the Internet comes up. But there’s a reason for that—AI destroyed it. Which is a crazy bit of lore to just drop out of nowhere, but here is Cyberpunk 2077 doing just that. Rogue AI’s destroyed the Net, and a “Blackwall” was erected to prevent them from spilling out into a portion of the Net cleared for continued use. There’s a lot of ominous mystery to the power of the Blackwall and what eldritch horrors lie beyond it, and I like that it’s portrayed as some forbidden knowledge no sane person would mess with (except the Voodoo Boys I guess).
A more lighthearted example of great worldbuilding is all of the slang. It doesn’t sound like it's trying too hard to become slang. It sounds like slang. I straight up say “choom” unironically. This game has irreversibly damaged my vocabulary. “When your Choom kleps a nova virtu but the corpo rat netrunner flatlines him before he can delta with the preem scroll so now your gonk ass is gonna get zeroed by a chromed out solo if you can’t fork over the eddies” That’s a copypasta that I understand in its entirety. It’s so over.
Also want to take some time to mention the soundtrack of this game. Cyberpunk 2077 has the best combat music of any game I’ve ever played. I’m not saying some of the best like I usually do in games. I’m saying the best. The Rebel Path that plays during Love Like Fire (and sh*t, just that whole main job) is such a goddamn banger its not even f*cking funny. The Milutech combat theme is also a banger…so is The Heist, so is Мусорщики (especially Мусорщики), Scavenger Hunt, NCPD Prowl, Wushu Dolls, Force Projection…my god it’s like this music was made to be put into my headphones. The composets must have had a divine revelation making the soundtrack. Both of the credit tracks (Never Fade Away and Phantom Liberty) are also beautifully haunting.
The radio tracks are also very good as well. The vast majority of the radio stations in game are genres I don’t listen to, but there’s a great selection of songs to play in-game. Pop, metal, ambient, jazz, rock, hip-hop, Latin music, and even a station full of community tracks (Growl FM; that one is my favorite). Night City, Fumes, and Afterlife are my favorites.
One final topic before I move to the cons. Phantom Liberty is a phenomenal DLC. There is not a doubt in my mind that the Phantom Liberty story is better than the main story. It's a much more condensed experience, and because of that, it has a lot more room to develop its characters, the premier of which are Solomon Reed and Song “Songbird” So Mi. Again…not much room to discuss the two without diving into major spoiler territory. But both of them perfectly exemplify the themes that come with the spy thriller topic of Phantom Liberty—service to government. In-universe, Night City is a free city, which came into being following the breakup of the United States. Phantom Liberty acquaints players with the New United States (NUSA), and two of its agents, Reed and Songbird, which both have a different outlook on their service to the president of the NUSA, Rosalind Myers, whom V is tasked with protecting when her transport crashes in the anarchistic Dogtown, outside Pacifica. It's hard to decide which of the two has things right about the NUSA, there are definitely merits to both sides. Still, there’s a lot to take in over the course of the Phantom Liberty story, and plenty of mind games going on that shake your faith on what characters are scheming behind your back.
Phantom Liberty’s main jobs are also amazing from a gameplay perspective. Dog Eat Dog has some great traversal through a derelict section of Dogtown’s defensive wall, and Spider and the Fly has a sick-ass boss fight against the Chimera as you attempt to avoid detection by the BARGHEST paramilitary group. I’ve Seen That Face Before is perhaps the coolest implementation of a spy thriller in a futuristic setting, and Firestarter (the pivotal “BETRAY ____” mission that determines your ending) actually had me nervous for what the consequences of my decision were going to be. I really, truly was at the edge of my seat. I ended up getting the King of Wands ending, and thus I got to play through the spectacular Killing Moon main job (harnessing that power to get to the shuttle was so so so so so AWESOME). Unfortunately, that meant I was locked out of the ending that Phantom Liberty gives the base game…but sh*t, I’d do King of Wands again. Even with what that character did to V…I couldn’t let them down after all we went through.
Dogtown is also a really fun setting for Phantom Liberty. I like that it expands upon Pacifica, which is the most underused location in the base game despite being one of the most interesting districts of Night City. Having a “playground for the rich” deteriorate into chaos as city officials fail to provide for the citizens living there really shows how self-serving the politicians are in Night City. It goes to show why some would actually like to live in Dogtown even though conditions there are so terrible; with BARGHEST blocking the Night City government and corporations from taking hold there, the illusion of freedom is present. A…phantom liberty, perhaps? Even just the name “phantom liberty” has great symbolism. Dogtown has phantom liberty, but so does the government of the NUSA. Both Reed and Songbird crave freedom despite supposedly already having it under the guise of American ideals.
Gameplay-wise, Dogtown has a nice selection of things to do. The airdrops are fun ways to have combat scenarios in an area with little gang activity, and give the player a nice source of additional iconic weapons, cyberware, and quickhacks. Plus, the EBM Petrochem Stadium merchants also allowing players to purchase missed iconic weapons is a great quality of life touch. The side jobs and gigs in Dogtown are also notably more involved than the ones in Night City proper, and feature more follow-up conversations and quests that make the characters in them feel more alive than in the base game. Dogtown is also home to the Relic attribute tree, which has some great upgrades even if they didn’t appeal to me all that much. You wanna feel even more overpowered than you do in the base game? Try out the Relic perks.
Finally, we get to the cons, and you already know the first thing I’m going to mention.
The release of this game was horrible, and frankly, CD Projekt Red f*cked up severely. I know that most consumers (including me) will never understand all the elements that go into conceptualizing, writing, modeling, developing, playtesting, advertising, and releasing a game, and how hard it is to reconcile all of those disparate tasks in an orderly manner. But still, you can’t look at the release of Cyberpunk 2077, with all of the game breaking bugs, terrible performance on last-gen consoles, and missing gameplay features that were claimed would be implemented like a metro system, dynamic NPC routines, vehicle and weapon customization, but weren't, and say “this wasn’t the developers fault”. Someone, somewhere in that company, people f*cked up. And the game was made much, much worse for it. I can’t even explain the full breadth of the bugs that existed in the 1.0 version of the game (since I never played it) but there are hundreds of YouTube videos that documented virtually every single one.
The game was delayed, and while I’m sure important work was done during that delay, it was still released in a poor state. Part of that is probably advertiser and investor pressure, but the causes of the poor release don’t really matter if you’re just looking at the finished project like I am. Many players either got a noticeably flawed experience or a completely unplayable one and it destroyed the reputation of the game so much that it took a whole-ass animated series that came out two years later (and the diligent work of the talented developers that brought this game back from the brink) to rehabilitate the image of the game. Despite how much I want to be excited for the Codename Orion sequel, after Cyberpunk’s rocky launch, I can’t say I’m as optimistic as I would like to be.
Story-wise, there are a few criticisms I’d make; two of them are more objective facts, and one of them is a bit more subjective. Firstly, I’m not gonna say who, but one very important character that has a very emotional moment tied to them at the end of Act 1 did not have enough development time before that moment happened. If you’ve played Cyberpunk I hope you know who I’m talking about. We get a montage with them and now we’re expected to see them as chooms (they are a choom, but that’s not the point). It would have been so much better (and that moment would hit so much harder) if the events portrayed in that montage were actually playable. This would certainly have required a restructuring of both main and side content, since Act 1 exploration is restricted to Watson and all its gigs as a sort of “tutorial.” But just imagine what could have been.
The implementation of lifepaths is perhaps the greatest failure of CD Projekt Red in Cyberpunk’s development, both story-wise and gameplay-wise. Lifepaths were “supposed” to influence the totality of V’s story, changing their backstory, relationships, and proficiencies. All they really do in practice is change the first main job and give you additional dialogue choices through the main story. Can you roleplay and play the game in line with the lifepath you chose? Of course. But it’s not the same as it actually affecting the game. Such a mechanic would be a monumental undertaking for any developer; it would essentially be writing three main stories worth of content. If there was anyone that could have done it though…it would be CD Projekt Red. They failed. And yet they promised more. I might be getting a little too dramatic writing this, but seriously, the lifepaths are a cool mechanic that aren’t realized fully. Frankly, they could have removed the lifepaths entirely and still ended up with a story similar in quality to the one we have now.
There’s a few more gameplay mechanics that I think needed some work and never got it. The most noticeable one for me is the friendly NPC pathfinding. It sucks. That’s really it. Friendly NPCs move at painfully slow speeds at times, wth teleportation being the only viable way they can keep up with you. They turn slowly and get stuck on doors. It’s weird because the enemy AI isn’t noticeably terrible. But for whatever reason, friendly NPCs just don't stack up.
There’s also the matter of Watson having too many gigs and Pacifica not having more than one. Watson, as the home district of V and thus the “tutorial” area, has a lot more gigs than the other districts so that players who don’t want to rush through the Act 1 main story can enjoy the side content at their own pace. Conceptually, this is nice, but when Watson has 20 gigs, Westbrook has 9, the City Center 5, and Pacifica has 1, you can see where the problem begins. At least Pacifica’s fixer Mr. Hands got to offer gigs in Dogtown. Poor Dino in the City Center must be bored. I would definitely sacrifice half of all the NPCD Scanner Hustles (there are too goddamn many of them) to get 5 more gigs for every district.
While the customization we have currently is fine, there’s a lot more room for it that Cyberpunk never got. Weapons can drop with custom paint jobs, but players can’t edit them themselves. Same thing with vehicles; can’t customize their tires, paint jobs, or engines, even though we’re buying the damn things. There’s also very little in the way of cyberware customization. For a universe filled with implants designed solely as cosmetics, we sure can’t use any of them. No chrome skin, Sandevistan-enhanced spinal columns, prosthetic limbs, Maelstrom-like ocular implants…just the ballistic coprocessor palms we get at the beginning of the game. Certainly something to be improved upon in Orion.
We also can’t remove mods from weapons, only dismantle them and have a chance at getting the mod back (if you have a certain perk that is). You’re telling me in a game with a Technical Ability attribute tree, we can’t take a weapon apart, remove a mod, and put it back together? How do they think we installed the damn thing??? There’s also no melee-based stealth kills despite there being dozens of different melee weapons, only the ole’ grab, choke, or snap. It’s so weird that we can’t stab somebody in the neck unless we get into open combat with them. Add it to the list of “things that will never be”—with the way Cyberpunk released, there sure are a lot of ‘em.
Cyberpunk 2077 is on the Wikipedia page for games notable for poor reception. But hey, in that same breath, the page also acknowledges that like No Man’s Sky and Final Fantasy XIV, it was improved through constant updates. Who knows if CD Projekt Red will deliver the experience players were promised with Orion? Phantom Liberty certainly convinced everyone of their goodwill. Still, if there’s one thing that Cyberpunk taught us, both in-universe and in real life…it's to never trust a corporation.
Nevertheless, *I* think that Cyberpunk 2077 is a great game, and sits in a fantastic state. It’s completely understandable to remember the horrors of 1.0 and give the game a poor review. But I’d say to give it another shot, even if you don’t buy Phantom Liberty. When I played this game for the first time, I expected nothing and got infinitely more than I could have bargained for. Not a perfect experience, mind you. There are still bugs (though they are more funny than frustrating) and the game is missing some key elements like good lifepaths. But there has always been a lot of heart in it. The good story was always there. So I’d say this city is worth burning, samurai.
Objective rating: 4 stars
Subjective rating: 4.5 stars
Phantom Liberty rating: 5 stars
