‘Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty’ Review: Blood And Sublime

There’s little need to rehash the full, mangled history of Cyberpunk 2077 at this point. It had such a fractured, unpolished launch that it has now become an industry cautionary tale as no one wants to “be another Cyberpunk” at release. CDPR did not want to lose its formerly sterling reputation, so it spent almost three years fixing and tweaking the game all leading up to this moment, the release of Update 2.0, a grand overhaul of the game, and new content in which to play that update, the Phantom Liberty expansion.

It impossible to extract Update 2.0 from Phantom Liberty, even if it applies to the entire game. It’s a transformative part of how the expansion feels, outside of the central storyline itself.

With that in mind, I cannot say that this is anything other than a 10/10 expansion. This is not a re-review of the entire game, now that this update and Phantom Liberty has arrived, but it is the score I’m giving the expansion itself in conjunction with the 2.0 overhaul.

Am I sure? I’m sure. I have now beaten Phantom Liberty twice on two platforms with two differently built Vs. My third is midway through the story. That’s about 50 or so hours in the expansion, which runs maybe 17-18 hours or so if you’re taking advantage of the side missions and a bit of exploration. A main story blitz would be shorter, but I wouldn’t recommend doing that.

The story starts out very Escape from New York, but it certainly doesn’t end that way. V is contacted by Songbird, a Netrunner who promises her a cure for her fatal Relic diagnosis if she will help rescue the president who is currently in for a rough landing nearby on Space Force One.

The president crashes in Dogtown, a walled-off portion of Night City controlled by a militant warlord, Kurt Hansen, who controls his own little empire complete with his minions that act as local cops. Hansen appears to want the president dead, but soon the focus of the entire storyline shifts to Songbird and her inexplicable disappearance. The president is rescued by the end of the intro mission. Songbird is whole other story.

Songbird is…valuable to the President and the entire NUSA for reasons I won’t get into, so you are tasked with finding her with the help of a long-dormant agent, which is how we meet Idris Elba’s Reed. And in case that wasn’t enough, Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Silverhand is of course still around offering cynical commentary on everything you do, in addition to some surprisingly poignant reflection on his own time in the military serving under the thumb of the NUSA before he deserted and become a rocker anarchist.

The storyline of Phantom Liberty is easily better than the entire chip-based Arasaka tale of the main game. I always said Cyberpunk’s companion-focused side missions were better than the central plot, and that’s true here as well, as you now partner up with Reed for the duration of the story (but no, you can’t romance him, sorry folks). Idris Elba is stellar here. His excellent voicework combined with CDPR’s animators make him feel more alive and real than any other character in the game, even more so than Keanu’s Johnny. He is the core of the expansion and the central reason the story works so well.

But I would not want to discount Songbird either as the second lead, a compelling character you want to help, but worry about what happens if you dive too far into the deep end with her ties to the NUSA and what work she does for them, exactly. And as ever, my (three) female Vs are voiced by Cherami Leigh, who I maintain has the single best performance of a first-person-only protagonist in video game history. And I stand by that with the additional, incredible voicework from Leigh in Phantom Liberty that takes V to new, emotional places she’s never been.

One more noteworthy “character” in the expansion here is the music. The score alone is worthy of its own five star review here, and it emphasizes the best moments in the game without overwhelming them. I’m still listening to the soundtrack as I write this.

Without getting into the meat of the story nor its endings (three of which I’ve seen, a fourth being the new overall main game ending), there are some gut-wrenching choices in here with genuinely shocking results in more than one instance. I cannot wait to get deeper into them in future articles once everyone has played.

In addition to the main quest, two fixers return, Muamar Reyes to give you gigs to steal cars and test out the new (pretty solid) car combat system, which does have at least one substantive quest attached to it, and Mr. Hands, where Dogtown is his territory, and he has around ten jobs to give you. However, he also has a role in the main storyline as well.

The missions are mostly stellar, approachable in different ways, and unique from almost anything else in the base game. All I will say about one near one branching path of the ending is that has easily the best, wildest cyberware-based gameplay moment I’ve ever seen in the series. However, another ending shoved me into my least favorite mission I encountered, a dreaded insta-death stealth segment that was deeply frustrating to clear. But on the whole, that was the only mission I didn’t like in the entire expansion.

I didn’t quite know what to think about Dogtown at first, which is tiny compared to the overall map of Night City. Though I do think we have to remember how much of Night City is empty space and closed doors. Here in Dogtown, while it’s much smaller, almost every space has a purpose, whether it’s buildings with multiple floors that missions take place in, or combat zones where airdrops fall. There you’ll fight a good number of enemies in order to hack into the dropped crate for some of the best rewards in the game.

As for gameplay, as I said, it’s impossible to separate 2.0 from Phantom Liberty here, even though I “reviewed” that aspect last week. It is a total transformation of how the game feels, and most of the reason I played on three characters in the first place was to get a sense of how my old, different builds felt. You can respec Attribute points once, given how much has changed, and you can now switch skill points any time you want for free to try build variants. There is a lot more cyberware, now with a new system that caps your total power usage until you upgrade it, or overclock it at the risk of going cyberpsycho (which gives you even more damage, in exchange for health). There are incredible new clothes and wild new Iconic guns with special abilities that rival anything in a looter-shooter.

My PC Netrunner build went from rather passive, killing enemies through linked systems without even going inside most buildings, to a lot more combat focused, on-the-fly quickhacks merged with Smart Weapons which now occupy the same intelligence tree, and synergize incredibly well.

My Xbox blade build was always strong, but under the new system it simply got out of control. My katana and Mantis Blades, especially with new Relic upgrades, could make short work of everyone, and all melee weapons have gruesome new finishers that also offer gameplay bonuses when performed. You can also deflect bullets back at enemies to kill them with their own rounds. I also threw some points into throwable blades, a system CDPR began implementing a while back, but now it has an entire skill tree and allows for some of the most satisfying kills in the game, both in and out of stealth.

Finally, I’m still playing on my assault class, where shotguns and LMGs can instantly “obliterate” enemies, essentially the Bloody Mess perk from Fallout, but with combat benefits after the fact. I have burning Gorilla Arms here, and a propensity for throwing close to an unlimited number of fire grenades as a I race around through 80% slowed time, shotgunning enemies in the head. Perhaps my most fun character of all.

It is a tragedy to say that this should have been the game we saw at launch, but again, it’s taken three years to get here, and I cannot imagine a launch delay that long would have even been possible. However, in the end, the finished product created here is absolutely worth everyone’s time, and that now includes what is very close to a perfect expansion. This is the most engaged I’ve been with video game story content in a very long time, and the most fun I’ve had dispatching enemies through a newly wild combat system, finally feeling like the full-on cyberpsycho I was always meant to be.

Phantom Liberty is a thoroughly excellent swan song for the tumultuous saga of Cyberpunk 2077. And after playing, you will be glad that CDPR has already greenlit a sequel, despite the fact that the initial release could have sunk the entire company. It’s a redemption story on the level of No Man’s Sky or Final Fantasy XIV, and deserves to be experienced for yourself, no matter what you may have thought of Cyberpunk three years back.

Score: 10/10

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.