After a rather disappointing two playthroughs of the base game I was eager to jump into the DLC, which received widespread acclaim upon its release. My initial reaction was mixed. On the one hand, Dogtown makes a great first impression, especially the stadium filled with NPCs and interesting looking places which serve as an entrance to the large, brand new area. I also found the starting point of the plot interesting, as I seemed to have been contacted by a netrunner struggling with the same affliction as V. Also, the president of the NUSA needed to be rescued! As I went along, though, I felt more and more like I was playing an extremely generic, 2010s AAA title rather than Cyberpunk. Lots of bombastic set pieces and corridor shooting of private militia enemies (which look like something straight out of a recent Call of Duty), a B-movie like plot, where the president of the country turns out to be capable with a gun and starts mowing down enemies like it’s just another Tuesday for her. And yes, there’s even an annoying jumping section and a boss fight against a gigantic mech/tank.
I don’t know if this ‘camp’ was something that the game’s writers were aiming for but it felt slightly out of place compared to V’s main quests, which were often very somber and self-serious. A similar thing can be said about some portions of the story which quite clearly go for the James Bond type of narrative, also feeling slightly off when looking at both the DLC and the main game as a whole. The problem, however, is that most of these new missions are much more fun than wherever the base game had to offer. This is the root of my ambivalence towards ‘Phantom Liberty’ - on the one hand I was enjoying my time, but I knew well that was due to the game allowing itself to be written as a more standard AAA action title. There are definitely some more serious moments in the main quest concerning Songbird and Solomon Reed, but they’re often drowned out by the big set pieces and campy espionage shenanigans. There’s even an entire level dedicated to Alien:Isolation-like stealth horror, which was enjoyable, but drove home even further the point that the DLC was aiming for things that seemed fun rather than to present a more coherent, serious, truly cyberpunk narrative. This feeling was further exacerbated by the game frequently forcing the all guns blazing approach on the player (if you only focus on stealth, you might be in trouble) and drifting even further away from the original idea of a deep RPG presented in a complex, morally gray setting. Hell, they even introduced QTEs early on when fighting alongside president Myers.
There aren’t too many new gigs available (ten if I remember correctly), but this time around they are definitely more engaging and include a more meaningful narrative background. The way they play out is: you get a gig from Mr. Hands, you infiltrate an area (usually much bigger ones than in gigs in the base game) and at the end there is a twist that forces the player to make a choice. You won’t find anything too substantial in there, as there don’t seem to be any long term consequences for choices made in these, but they were a welcome addition as I could finally think for more than two seconds about what I wanted my V to do. I also liked the fact that some areas in Dogtown are only accessible on foot (or, if you try hard, on bike), making me pay more attention to the surrounding areas and in effect becoming more aware of the world around me.
What I didn’t enjoy at all was the addition of car theft contracts from one of the fixers. They seemed really low effort and simply have you drive a car out of Dogtown to some remote location within a given time limit, fighting off enemies on the road or delivering the car without damaging it too much. I gave up on those pretty quickly.
There are some genuinely interesting moments in ‘Phantom Liberty’, a standout for me was the youth sports ‘academy’ providing some scathing critique of the world of professional sports. Songbird’s story also turned out to be quite tragic, making me regret some of the earlier choices I made regarding her and her relationship to Reed. There’s also an alternate game ending included here, although it was rather disappointing and I don’t recommend it (although the base game endings were equally disappointing, so I don’t know).
I don’t know if this ‘camp’ was something that the game’s writers were aiming for but it felt slightly out of place compared to V’s main quests, which were often very somber and self-serious. A similar thing can be said about some portions of the story which quite clearly go for the James Bond type of narrative, also feeling slightly off when looking at both the DLC and the main game as a whole. The problem, however, is that most of these new missions are much more fun than wherever the base game had to offer. This is the root of my ambivalence towards ‘Phantom Liberty’ - on the one hand I was enjoying my time, but I knew well that was due to the game allowing itself to be written as a more standard AAA action title. There are definitely some more serious moments in the main quest concerning Songbird and Solomon Reed, but they’re often drowned out by the big set pieces and campy espionage shenanigans. There’s even an entire level dedicated to Alien:Isolation-like stealth horror, which was enjoyable, but drove home even further the point that the DLC was aiming for things that seemed fun rather than to present a more coherent, serious, truly cyberpunk narrative. This feeling was further exacerbated by the game frequently forcing the all guns blazing approach on the player (if you only focus on stealth, you might be in trouble) and drifting even further away from the original idea of a deep RPG presented in a complex, morally gray setting. Hell, they even introduced QTEs early on when fighting alongside president Myers.
There aren’t too many new gigs available (ten if I remember correctly), but this time around they are definitely more engaging and include a more meaningful narrative background. The way they play out is: you get a gig from Mr. Hands, you infiltrate an area (usually much bigger ones than in gigs in the base game) and at the end there is a twist that forces the player to make a choice. You won’t find anything too substantial in there, as there don’t seem to be any long term consequences for choices made in these, but they were a welcome addition as I could finally think for more than two seconds about what I wanted my V to do. I also liked the fact that some areas in Dogtown are only accessible on foot (or, if you try hard, on bike), making me pay more attention to the surrounding areas and in effect becoming more aware of the world around me.
What I didn’t enjoy at all was the addition of car theft contracts from one of the fixers. They seemed really low effort and simply have you drive a car out of Dogtown to some remote location within a given time limit, fighting off enemies on the road or delivering the car without damaging it too much. I gave up on those pretty quickly.
There are some genuinely interesting moments in ‘Phantom Liberty’, a standout for me was the youth sports ‘academy’ providing some scathing critique of the world of professional sports. Songbird’s story also turned out to be quite tragic, making me regret some of the earlier choices I made regarding her and her relationship to Reed. There’s also an alternate game ending included here, although it was rather disappointing and I don’t recommend it (although the base game endings were equally disappointing, so I don’t know).