Phantom Liberty was in several ways a solid step towards solving what I believe to be Cyberpunk 2077's greatest weakness: a lack of cohesion. Overall, I would certainly call it a memorable and impressive experience—with immaculate visual flair in particular. But, it also slips nearly as frequently and reminds me that the core design goals are oil and water at the end of the day. Yet, I can still appreciate the effort CDPR has put in to stir the beaker for a few moments of a clean blend.
For this review, however, I'll stick to just my points on the expansion content itself.
The Game is gorgeous
First and foremost and legitimately the greatest pull for me: the visuals. Sweet gotdamn this game already looked good, but the lighting work and scenery composition in Dog Town is—mwah—chef's kiss. This isn't just about fidelity (though running it with Ray Traced reflections at a solid framerate is certainly a plus) but the sheer flair of the visual design. The colors are vibrant but not over saturated, they fit the moods of the scenes, and almost tell the whole story of the game on their own.
It's a gorgeous game, and it's going to be a lot of fun running the experimental Path Tracing renderer next time I upgrade my rig. It's actually "playable" already on that setting… outside of Dog Town
Unfortunately, Dog Town takes all of the gains on performance stability that CDPR attained with the base game content and throws most of them out the window. The new areas are more complex than the base game, so it's not for nothing, but a little bit of a shame that we're halfway back to 2020 performance-wise.
The gameplay has made some progress
Level design here is a step up from before—most of the time—with environments having a lot more character navigation-wise and feeling a lot more… "independent." In the base game, mission spaces felt like they were squeezed into the gaps of the open world. Important objectives were often a stone's throw away from where you entered a location to the point making the whole proceedings feel like you just walked into a convenience store instead of some secret lab or PMC base.
It's… still weak when comparing this game to an immersive sim, though. And I think that is an apt comparison since it gives all the signs that it's trying to tap into that kind of design.
One particular part of the main quest really exemplifies this problem. I'll avoid spoilers, but essentially what happens is you're given the option to talk or go in loud, but if you're paying attention to the environment you'll also find an option to sneak in. Great!… Which leads right into a scripted pitfall and you're back to fighting.
Some parts were better, but despite the "subterfuge" theme of the expansion and plentiful character ability options for stealth, the encounter design neither gives you much to play with nor changes the results in any satisfying way.
The story is... well I'm not quite sure yet
Narratively, I'm less sure about how I feel about this game. One thing I can say for certain is that some of the conversations and set pieces are quite phenomenal taken individually. It's just how it all glues together that I'm less decided on. I'm tempted to say it has the same cohesion problem that the game design does… but on the other hand the messiness and lack of clear opinions on the themes it plays with feels right—in a frustrating way.
I think I have a personal hang up with the narrative of Cyberpunk. One I didn't have in my original playthrough of the base game, but has emerged on the replay: I don't know who "V" is.
The short version for now is quite simply that I always felt a conflict between what I would do and who the narrative believes V to be. This was a minor issue in the base game, but it's amplified three-fold in the context of a spy-thriller. It's a story full of nuance and thin-lines, but you as an actor in this story are stuck only able to make 2-3 fairly disparate decisions.
By the end, some of them shake out a bit better with follow up decisions, but the routes to get there put me out of sync with the story until then. As stated, though, that's probably mostly a personal hangup.
Objectively, I just have some fairly petty and likely fairly baseless complaints about the political-tactical maneuvering some of the characters make. But the world just works different in CP77 so I'll ignore those.
I wouldn't call the game "fixed" but it's still good
In the end, if you enjoyed the base game, this is a good extra hit of that. If you need more eye candy in your gaming, this is that. If you didn't enjoy CP77 the first time, this won't change your mind, I don't think.
For this review, however, I'll stick to just my points on the expansion content itself.
The Game is gorgeous
First and foremost and legitimately the greatest pull for me: the visuals. Sweet gotdamn this game already looked good, but the lighting work and scenery composition in Dog Town is—mwah—chef's kiss. This isn't just about fidelity (though running it with Ray Traced reflections at a solid framerate is certainly a plus) but the sheer flair of the visual design. The colors are vibrant but not over saturated, they fit the moods of the scenes, and almost tell the whole story of the game on their own.
It's a gorgeous game, and it's going to be a lot of fun running the experimental Path Tracing renderer next time I upgrade my rig. It's actually "playable" already on that setting… outside of Dog Town
Unfortunately, Dog Town takes all of the gains on performance stability that CDPR attained with the base game content and throws most of them out the window. The new areas are more complex than the base game, so it's not for nothing, but a little bit of a shame that we're halfway back to 2020 performance-wise.
The gameplay has made some progress
Level design here is a step up from before—most of the time—with environments having a lot more character navigation-wise and feeling a lot more… "independent." In the base game, mission spaces felt like they were squeezed into the gaps of the open world. Important objectives were often a stone's throw away from where you entered a location to the point making the whole proceedings feel like you just walked into a convenience store instead of some secret lab or PMC base.
It's… still weak when comparing this game to an immersive sim, though. And I think that is an apt comparison since it gives all the signs that it's trying to tap into that kind of design.
One particular part of the main quest really exemplifies this problem. I'll avoid spoilers, but essentially what happens is you're given the option to talk or go in loud, but if you're paying attention to the environment you'll also find an option to sneak in. Great!… Which leads right into a scripted pitfall and you're back to fighting.
Some parts were better, but despite the "subterfuge" theme of the expansion and plentiful character ability options for stealth, the encounter design neither gives you much to play with nor changes the results in any satisfying way.
The story is... well I'm not quite sure yet
Narratively, I'm less sure about how I feel about this game. One thing I can say for certain is that some of the conversations and set pieces are quite phenomenal taken individually. It's just how it all glues together that I'm less decided on. I'm tempted to say it has the same cohesion problem that the game design does… but on the other hand the messiness and lack of clear opinions on the themes it plays with feels right—in a frustrating way.
I think I have a personal hang up with the narrative of Cyberpunk. One I didn't have in my original playthrough of the base game, but has emerged on the replay: I don't know who "V" is.
The short version for now is quite simply that I always felt a conflict between what I would do and who the narrative believes V to be. This was a minor issue in the base game, but it's amplified three-fold in the context of a spy-thriller. It's a story full of nuance and thin-lines, but you as an actor in this story are stuck only able to make 2-3 fairly disparate decisions.
By the end, some of them shake out a bit better with follow up decisions, but the routes to get there put me out of sync with the story until then. As stated, though, that's probably mostly a personal hangup.
Objectively, I just have some fairly petty and likely fairly baseless complaints about the political-tactical maneuvering some of the characters make. But the world just works different in CP77 so I'll ignore those.
I wouldn't call the game "fixed" but it's still good
In the end, if you enjoyed the base game, this is a good extra hit of that. If you need more eye candy in your gaming, this is that. If you didn't enjoy CP77 the first time, this won't change your mind, I don't think.