The road to “Cyberpunk 2077” and the road to this newly released DLC “Phantom Liberty” are two very different roads. I remember the talk over CD Projekt Red’s next game after “The Witcher III: Wild Hunt” was hitting levels of hype I’ve never seen in a video game. The game took many years to come out of course, and even just before its launch, we got the added bonus of finding out fan-beloved star Keanu Reeves was in the game and his new famous line was born, “You’re breathtaking!” I myself was all in on this hype, I even got the Cyberpunk themed Secret Lab computer chair prior to the games original release. Well, it’s common knowledge in the video game circles now that the original release of “Cyberpunk 2077” was very much less than stellar. With the PC version being the least bad version on the market, if you had a very top of the line rig, it was a huge shame to see the state of this game be riddled with countless bugs and glitches that made your console or computer just crash. As someone who bought the big collector’s edition, I was a bit heartbroken that I ultimately decided to put the game down very quickly and just let the developers fix this game up into a better state. Reviews at the time were praising the game itself, just not the state it came in. So fast forward a year or more, the game is now more playable and there are even versions for the new modern consoles, while I dipped my toes back into the world of Night City, I wasn’t able to fully immerse myself into it. Let’s fast forward one more time another year and we finally get the first and only story DLC “Phantom Liberty” but we also got a new overhauled version of the base game with patch 2.0, and this was the game changer I needed.
If you want a more in-depth review of the base game, please check out Greg’s review from back during “Cyberpunk 2077’s” original release HERE. From here on out though I will be discussing the 2.0 version of the game and “Phantom Liberty.” In this DLC, your character by the name of V is called upon to visit that walled off area on the map that is called the Dogtown District. You meet a new digital ghost, this time a female named Songbird, who informs you that she is on a plane with the new president of the United States and that they are about to crash into Dogtown. Songbird seems to only trust you to help minimize a potential much larger body count. Once the plane does indeed crash, it’s up to you to get to the wreckage and rescue the ones still alive before more nefarious folk get there first. The first couple hours of the story is incredibly told with an adrenaline fueled pace that had me lose track of the time. The later hours of this story unfolded in ways I never saw coming, getting to know these characters more and more, it was tough to decide who I could really trust, but either way, the performances were extremely well done. If you didn’t know already, legendary actor Idris Elba plays a role in “Phantom Liberty” as the character of Reed, who has his own very compelling arc.
There are about 10 new gigs you can get as well as maybe a dozen side quests peppered around this very dense but thriving Dogtown District. The quests themselves felt they were a lot more imaginative than the basic fetch style quests you would often get. The choices I made as V carried a lot of weight as well as their own consequences, which really made me even more in love with this world and the stories of morality they’re trying to tell. I don’t want to go too much further about the story, but this DLC also adds an extra new potential ending for the overall game. The story here really is what makes “Cyberpunk 2077” stand out, with their emotionally difficult choices you are forced to make. A couple other things I want to highlight are the new perk progression system has been completely overhauled, that not only makes it easier to digest, but is also much more welcoming on trying out new things. The police system is also way more advanced, and there is now vehicular combat. None of which was really utilized in the DLC story, but is cool to have in the base game now.
So after about three years after its initial release, we finally have the version of the base game that should have arrived when it launched (better late than never I suppose) and, with this added story, they really honed in on their strengths to tell some very compelling storytelling and to prove to us that CD Projekt Red may have done us dirty, but are here to fix that and to show us they are the masters we believed they were to be. I feel relieved that I can finally sit down in my expensive Secret Lab chair, not in shame, and enjoy the version of “Cyberpunk 2077” I was meant to experience.
9/10
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Related: Nick Navarro Reviews
Gaming since I was given an original Nintendo as a kid. I love great storytelling and unique ingenuity. When both collide in a single game, I'm a happy gamer. Twitter/IG @NickNavarro87
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