I'll keep the introduction short this time and get straight to the point. Phantom Liberty is the best DLC I've ever played.

Dogtown being a closed-off and compact district makes it feel more personal and memorable than a lot of Night City. It being a run-down, bleak area definitely makes it stand out among the rest of the world - characters and lore tidbits always describe it as this hopeless, brutal place and I believe the overall design is quite fitting for that description.

Now, the supporting cast is more grounded and morally grey here than the companions in the base game, which I personally think is great, because it fits the moody vibe of the narrative and makes them more interesting. Each character has their own intentions and it's up to the player to decide who to trust and who to avoid - Phantom Liberty's narrative alone has four endings, depending on your choices throughout the expansion. Don't overthink this aspect too much, since the points where your choices change the storyline are very clear and not your run-of-the-mill dialogue options. If you're a completionist and want to see all endings in a single playthrough, just make a backup save file right before those choices and you're good to go. Speaking of those endings, they're really impressive and you'll definitely think about them for a while.

Aside from the narrative, Phantom Liberty also adds meaningful side content to Cyberpunk 2077. There are ten new gigs, like a dozen new side quests and an entirely new skill tree. I really liked those gigs, because they weren't just "get to this PC" or "kill/spare this person" like in the base game, but all felt like little side quests on their own. The skill tree is not as expansive as the standard ones, but it adds some nice perks for melee combat and an alternative to headshots with the weak point gauge.

You see, I almost entirely forgot to mention the setpieces in the DLC. My bad! Everyone likes a good setpiece and the spy movie setting is definitely on point here - you infiltrate a casino, a triangular-shaped club and a bunch of unique spoilery sceneries where I wouldn't like to ruin the surprise. Make sure to look for the several character cameos in the casino mission!

If you're looking to spend more time in Night City, Phantom Liberty is a must-buy. In my opinion it's everything I wanted from a final arc in Cyberpunk 2077 and I really just enjoy how thought-provoking it was overall. Fantastic DLC.

Here's my review for the base game!

"Just focus on tying up all your loose ends - then you and I are leaving this city once and for all." ~ Judy Álvarez

For many, Cyberpunk 2077 will always be remembered as the game with arguably the worst launch next to No Man's Sky. It was a bugfest and the console experience was so bad that refunds were provided from the developers themselves. But I'm not here to talk about the launch - instead I would like to share my personal experience after ~100 hours of playing and getting all available endings, entirely in patch 2.1 and right off the bat with Phantom Liberty (which I reviewed already).

Cyberpunk really shines in terms of presentation. The vibes are incredible, Night City nails the feeling of a dystopian and futuristic metropolis perfectly. You know, flashy neon lights and advertisements are plastered all over the city and the streets are always busy. Another thing that really helps the immersion here is the lighting. An often overlooked aspect, but it's probably the best ambient lighting I've ever seen in a game alongside Red Dead Redemption 2. Do yourself a favor and cruise through Night City on a rainy night, you'll see what I'm talking about. By the way, this is without Raytracing. RTX enabled is a whole different beast, but I didn't keep it on for long, because it was taking a serious toll on my frames and I'm a person who likes to enjoy games with a smooth framerate over graphical fidelity all day.

The main story is solid, albeit not very long. You could probably finish it under 20 hours in total if you're beelining the main quests and ignore the side content. Despite the short runtime, you'll find yourself in a lot of cool setpieces and get acquainted to many great characters, each with their own individual questline. I would definitely recommend playing those quests, since they're a lot more personal than the overarching narrative and really help understanding the struggles and personalities of V's friends better. Speaking of those friends, I think the fluff text messages you get every now and then are a great feature. Makes the world feel more alive and it's always nice to see characters being relevant outside of their own contained substories. Romance is also a neat little mechanic - I really like how CDPR provides extra text messages for your partner, so they ask about V's life every now and then. There's an unique quest where you can also hang out with them at your apartment and talk about stuff, this is repeatable, but unfortunately the dialogue repeats after the first time. Just use your imagination here and you're golden.

Cyberpunk's side content is mainly divided into two different mission types - gigs and side jobs. Gigs are one-time missions where you do a quick job for a fixer of choice, like breaking into an apartment to retrieve some data for a client. How you handle those missions is entirely up to you (unless there's an optional objective you'd like to complete), so you could opt for a stealthy approach or just shoot your way through the enemies. Combat in general is very diverse, you can have Mantis Blade implants inside your arms or blind enemies with hacks - there are so many possible builds. I went with a Netrunner/Gunslinger build, since not many games offer you the opportunity to weaken your opponents by just hacking them! And pistols just feel like the most comfy ranged option to me - a silenced one for stealth and another unsilenced one for loud combat. If you're still unsure on a build, I'd recommend testing some of the iconic weapons (basically the "legendary" weapons of this game), since they come with unique perks. There's a lot of them, so I'm sure some of them will appeal to you. Now, I didn't go in detail about the side jobs, but that's because they're more narrative-driven quests. Some of them feel like the Stranger quests in RDR2, while others have more complex tales to tell. So basically they are a great pastime if you're looking for more worldbuilding in Night City.

If you found yourself asking the whole time "But what about the bugs?", while reading this, then I'll gladly answer that for you. In my 97 hours of playtime I only had a single crash happen (right before writing this review ironically), but since the game autosaves often enough, it was a loss of like 3 minutes only. I haven't encountered a single game-breaking bug, just some small immersion-breakers every now and then, alongside two "real" bugs. This includes various items clipping into the hands of NPCs when they were supposed to put them away and NPCs in general teleporting on rooftops where they aren't supposed to be. The "real" bugs were my V glitching through a wall after a character crashed my car into that wall in a scripted cutscene (had to reload my save) and I've also had enemies walk through a closed garage door once - but that one was rather funny, despite being unfair. There's another problem I'd like to address, but I'm not entirely sure if it's a bug, so I'm not going to label it as one. It's related to quests starting through calls of certain characters. The game explicitly tells you "Wait a day until this character calls you back." and then sometime they just don't call at all, despite 24 hours having passed in-game. Worst offender was when I tried to start the follow-up mission to the companion mission "Off the Leash", the quest giver was supposed to call after one in-game day but it took me two real-time hours (after several virtual days passed already) for that character to call. For your own sanity I recommend doing other gigs or side jobs inbetween, because I'm very sure the calls will come on time if you don't just try to exploit the waiting feature to skip to those quests instantly. Try to let it play out naturally.

Are you a fan of the Edgerunners anime? Well, good news for you! The world of Cyberpunk 2077 also includes small nods to the series, like the graves of the deceased characters at the cemetery. There's also a side job where you can get David's iconic jacket and you can find Rebecca's famous shotgun out in the world too (if you remember the spot she left it in the anime).

The final point I'd like to address in this review is the soundtrack. (Yeah, there are other songs besides I Really Want To Stay At Your House.) While the OST in The Witcher 3 had a calmer, more comforting vibe, Cyberpunk's music fits the high octane combat accordingly, but some of the best tracks come from the sad and serious moments in the game. For car rides, the different radio stations allow you to listen to your music genre of choice. Speaking of the cars, I find it a lot more satisfying to drive to quest locations than to just quick travel there (which I regrettably did a lot in like the first 20 hours of my playthrough). It's just a lot more immersive and driving feels great if you have a car you like. (My personal favorite ride is the Outlaw, great speed and handles well.)

I have talked a lot about this game now. That's because I love it. So if you would ask me if Cyberpunk is worth it, I would definitely recommend you to pick up the base game on sale sometime and go for Phantom Liberty if you want to spend more time in this fantastic world. It's pretty much in a fixed state now and if what I described in this review seems interesting to you, why not give it a go? There were very few moments where I was actually bored, even the beginning is great and brings you pretty fast into the action (unlike a certain cowboy game I have named several times in this review already).

That's all I wanted to share - thanks for reading.

Audio is one of the most important parts of any horror game. Hell, I would argue that it is THE most important thing to do well when creating a horror game. When I heard this game was designed around voice proximity voice chat, I knew it was gonna be amazing but I wasn't ready for the absolute gem that this game's audio design has.

As soon as you enter a game, you'll notice how grotesque everything looks, sounds and feel. The UI showing your cracked helmet, the footsteps in your metal ship emphasizing how heavy your boots are, the way you "press the brakes" whenever you change to an opposite direction... all of these pieces get together and make you feel suffocated, dirty, and tired. This is how Lethal Company sets the tone and begins to make you uncomfortable in just a matter of seconds. This is the base level of comfort that the game will throw at you and it doesn't get safer than this and I love it.

After learning how the terminal works, you get to a moon and enter the facility, where the game actually starts. Monsters barely make a sound but they're all very distinguishable from eachother. Most of the time, you won't hear anything but the ambient noise. Filled with metal creaking, landmines beeping, or even fireplaces but.. try and think how any of those things I mentioned sound. Now make it crunchy and dry. That's every noise in this game. No sound sounds as you would expect it and if it does, it's 10 times worse than you imagined and I adore that.

Let's address the elephant in the room; Voice chat.
In this game, Voice Chat is so well done and optimized that if you're underwater, your voice will sound all "wobbly". If a monster is suffocating you, your voice will sound muffled. Fuck, if you inhale helium, your pitch will go higher too because this game is fucking amazing.
Your teammate's voice will bounce in the walls as you would expect it to happen IRL in a place like that. I have zero fucking idea how the developer did this, I am intrigued, fascinated and scared at how perfected this is.

Everything is so well done and achieved that when doing it with friends, you can't avoid but laugh and have a fun time and the developer is well aware of this.
While the amount of monsters and items are not a lot, they're all unique and memorable due to the way everything interacts with the player(s). If a spider kills someone, they will be wrapped in webs and left to dangle in its nest. Everything has a way to counter it and play around, making it always fun and unnerving to get into a new moon.

It's a game where you constantly adapt around it's circumstances. It's punishing, it's fun, and I can understand how it's "trial and error" nature can turn some people off, which is why this being a coop game is just perfect.