Cyberpunk 2077 / Phantom Liberty Review

There are three things that cyberpunk 2077 and its expansion excel at and those are its major characters, its art direction and its setpieces, everything else works well enough but isn’t outstanding. I’m happy I got around to playing this now in its patched and re-released state, because if it was released in this state when it was actually supposed to, I think a lot of people would not only be more fair on it, it would probably be regarded as one of the greatest first person rpgs ever, a reputation it is steadily earning but it still sours people with how its launch went down and how it has still got a lot of rough edges. But I have to hand it to cd projekt, they got extremely ambitious and wanted to create something special, something different, something people would remember for a long time - and in my mind they did just that even with its rough edges, largely unimaginative gameplay and mild inconsistencies.

I’ll get the negatives out the way because I want to focus on what I loved about cyberpunk but frankly, I do not love cyberpunk’s open world all that much; its too small to feel worth exploring and didn’t motivate me to sink my teeth into it but it is simultaneously big enough that you’re forced to spend a long time just trying to get around when its simply not that fun and pads the game out somewhat. Up until you can get the dash and a double jump or charge jump, walking and running around is slow and boring especially since there’s not much to see or do besides admire the aesthetic, shop and interact with a bar or club once and never do it again because there’s no point. Driving is fine but just feels kind of tacked on, most vehicles feel too bulky and slow or too slippery and finicky to control. Shooting / combat is the main focus of cyberpunk’s core gameplay and definitely the most fleshed out and interesting part of it since there’s a lot of variety and a nice range of weapons and builds to play with, any of which can be used at any time with no restrictions or necessary optimisation. You could probably do this whole game melee and with only a few exceptions, you’d likely have no trouble, you can hard focus on a particular weapon / style as I did with the shotgun, or you can get a taste for everything and not suffer for it, its well executed. With this being said though, enemy ai is often plain dumb and the difficulty is never particularly challenging or balanced on normal since its largely a breeze + when it IS slightly more difficult, it feels kind of artificial because it means they just throw tons more enemies at you or have enemies zip around and just delay their inevitable death, same could be said for enemy hacks which just feel like a mild annoyance rather than a real challenging gameplay obstacle. There’s some noticeable dissonance in cyberpunk between the constant fear and stakes being held over V’s head / the trauma that V undergoes in cutscenes and the cakewalk shooting sequences which consist of a gallery of meat puppets that you can mow down with little more than a gust of wind. There’s times that style of gameplay works though, like making me seem like a badass in johnny’s sequences and during particularly driven story moments, but its often such a breeze that I feel like going stealthy or playing a hacker when you’re up against such pissant enemies would bore me to tears. I can think of two fights in this entire game where it was particularly difficult and one is because there’s infinitely spawning enemies and one is the final boss so, stands to reason I guess? There are times where the gameplay gets interesting and tries something new which I appreciate, such as scanning through braindances to find clues for your jobs, which I think work quite well and add to the immersion of a technologically advanced universe - but it could have been done more often and with more variety in honesty.

Which brings me to the story, the highlight and driving force behind everything in this game’s world, something cd prokect clearly put a ton of time and resources into, even hiring two a-list celebrities (keanu & idris) to work with and help promote the title and its expansion. All that work does pay off because when we’re talking the main story beats, the game at its finest moments, yeah its pretty fuckin’ preem alright. Not very gonk at all. Without going off on a complete tangent, what I will say is Jackie Welles is in this game for what, 2 hours? I love him so much, he is my choom for life, an absolute king and his death hit me like a truck and actually made me shed a tear. Not only that, while knowing my V was going to be a street punk with dreams of becoming a boss in the crime business, I never expected my ideal path would be so strongly swayed by Jackie’s irreplaceable friendship and shared dream of the ‘major leagues’ we were both reaching for. I never forgot my roots and wanted to fulfil our dream which I ended up getting, bittersweet as it felt without him by side. But just as important is Johnny, your ride or die partner, love him or hate him Johnny is not going anywhere and as a result, the game teeters on an edge narratively, wherein if Johnny does not work, the game does not work, he is purely that important. I had my doubts, I like Keanu as much as the next person but I never understood the worship of the man, but then after seeing him in stuff like the matrix, john wick and point break, I have a feeling this might be the best performance of his career and shows how he has honed his talent. Sure Johnny is just an asshole stuck on you like a leech, a professional cynic bitter and angry at the world, but Keanu and the writers make him so much more, they make you understand him. Johnny is a killer but so are you, he fucks people over and inevitably, so do you, V will have something in common with him whether you like it or not. He will question you, berate you, stare you down during ordinary encounters and judge your every move because he’s sharing the same body but has little control over the choices you make. But then, when you get down to it, I don’t think he even knows what choices he’d make in the same position, part of him just enjoys the chaos and he practically says so himself. While he’s a cliche in part as the anti-establishment rockerboy, Johnny actually breaks a lot of stereotypes and preconceptions as the story humanises him and forces you to see from his perspective. Aspects of his come off as childish and immature, but then he comes out with lines that make me question myself if im doing the right thing or being played and he demonstrates a far deeper understanding of the world and how it works than I once thought. Just seeing Johnny appear mid-conversation or mid-cutscene, knowing nobody else can see him, is so good, there’s something special about knowing you’re not alone at any time, even at your lowest, in your most humiliating defeats, Johnny is there with you and most of all, he will come around to genuinely want to help you. In the beginning he wants you gone but can’t get rid of you, so he too comes to understand you and it forms a bond, an unusual and one of a kind bond that nobody else could ever truly understand, its awesome stuff.
The relationship between V and Johnny is so good infact, that it feels almost like so many eggs in one basket that the other baskets become nearly empty, side quests and side characters like the fixers you’ll run into and folk you do gigs for won’t scratch the same itch, they are often hollow quest givers and faces, which is a shame. But there are exceptions, and like all of cyberpunk, at their best, they are outstanding. Judy, Rogue, Reed, Songbird and of course my man Jackie all won me over completely, showing emotional richness, flaw and vulnerability that build character and form deep connections and personal relationships. The strongest of V’s relationships form with some of the lowest or most hard up of society because V is going through the same shit and I think that’s great. In its main story beats there is tons of payoff, political intrigue and moral choices to be made and almost all of them hit. But they feel somewhat hindered by a relatively lifeless free-roam world, overly familiar looting & checklist formulas and an overload of random side jobs, gigs and errands that bloat the game out while you wait for the good stuff and rarely feel worth the reward. In my opinion, cyberpunk didn’t actually need to be open world, in a way, I think i’d like it even more if it was just a linear action rpg with a hub saferoom or something from which you can start missions, but what we got is far from bad, I just think you could save on all that time and double down your dev team on the already great story missions.

As for the art design and aesthetic, its all executed beatifully and many of the visual and action-packed setpieces it will throw at you are works of art. From konpeki plaza to the arasaka parade and the many gorgeous sequences in phantom liberty, there are some hugely impressive sequences that play out throughout the game. Phantom Liberty in particular involves a few moments of covert espionage and deception that rival some of the best movie scenes in just how intense and beautifully, intentionally crafted they feel. While the cyberpunk aesthetic and its key facets play an important role in gameplay from scanning your environment to hacking on the move to literally implanting cyberware into your body, the actual relative story & in-world implications of the advanced tech and dystopian ramifications of corporate greed are surprisingly few and far between. This is a story helped along by its timeline & setting, but not one that is hugely driven by it and while it can appear complex what with its own in world jargon / slang and detailed environments jam-packed with repressive imagery and corpo ad spaces, its honestly not that conceptually deep overall. The characters, their motivations and your own player choices are the driving force behind cyberpunk narratively, not so much the world you find yourself in, much as the game tries to drive the nail in with dialogue, journal entries and text logs that kind of hamfist the notion of ‘this place is a shithole and we’re all bad people’. Like alright, I get it!
Cyberpunk is actually very depressing huh! Where’s the hover skateboards mate? (kidding).

All in all I really enjoyed my time in night city and would come back for more, which is mainly because of the characters and the playstyles over wanting to spend much more time in the world, nice as it can be to soak in the incredible architecture & environments. This is a beautifully designed experience artistically and its dlc expands on it even more with phantom liberty offering some of the deepest and most intense final moments and personal decisions i’ve seen in a game to date, featuring a complicated moral dilemma and a gripping tale of loyalty and doing the right thing. There is one thing reed said in this dlc that stuck with me, mentioning Welles and the choice I made and it really made me think - infact, a lot of lines in this game make me stop and think and that’s rare because most of the time I just want to blow shit up. Infact, sometimes I want to be done with blowing shit up so that I can get back to the story, because its that fucking good!!

Cheers for reading this one was a bit of a ramble lol.