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Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty review: perhaps the best expansion pack ever madeYou only live twice
You only live twice
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/CD Projekt Red
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/CD Projekt Red
Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty — Official Cinematic TrailerThe Phantom Liberty cinematic trailer depicts events seven years before the game begins.Watch on YouTube
Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty — Official Cinematic Trailer
Long before you need to think about that, you’ll meet Songbird. She’s a government hacker, and she’ll call you with a job around two-thirds of the way intoCyberpunk 2077’s main storyline - or immediately, if you chose to skip direct to Phantom Liberty’s missions from character creation.
Phantom Liberty is an expansion, but it’s as large and as long as many standalone games. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/CD Projekt Red
The bait for players is that Dogtown is perhaps the most dense Cyberpunk district yet. After a brief sequence in the abandoned parking structure of a half-completed sports stadium, you’ll emerge into the market now held in what was once the stadium’s concourse. I can only compare this stepping-out to my first moments inHalf-Life 2’s City 17, nearly twenty years ago, when a surveillance droid, Dr. Breen public service announcements, and a taunting Combine soldier let me know I’d arrived in a new world.
Dogtown’s market does the same thing, but to 2023 standards. The cries of street hawkers rise above the blaring news reports playing from TV screens positioned above the countertop of a noodle bar behind which the cooks shake and stir their pans. A jawless cyborg wishes to show you his elbow flamethrowers, a couple of familiar-looking braindance salesmen are plotting revolution from the back of their renovated van buried under a mountain of trash, and a kid stands on a stool so he can be seen from behind the table where he advertises his preem cyberware. In the spaces between these vendors, there are people everywhere - eating, drinking, spraypainting, dancing, chatting, perusing, sleeping, or just passing through.
Then you step out again - or rather, slide, in a manner I won’t spoil - into the streets of Dogtown outside. What strikes you first is maybe the glowing pyramid, which you’ll later learn houses a nightclub, or maybe the floating barge in the sky with the giant picture of Kurt Hansen’s face on the side, which you’ll learn has a habit of drifting into the background of scenes as a reminder of where you’re headed.
Songbird sometimes appears to you as Johnny does, like a hologram inside your brain. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/CD Projekt Red
The changes to all of these progression systems are substantial enough that booting up an old save post-patch leads to all your previous upgrade points being refunded so you can re-invest them, and a Ripperdoc inviting you to come in and reimplement your newly rebalanced cyberware. Whatever choices you make with your do-over, it seems much easier to craft a coherent character build. I respecced from Hugh Jackman in Swordfish to Gerard Butler in literally any Gerard Butler film and I didn’t regret it. It’s even worth visiting a wardrobe, since clothes are no longer a form of armour and you therefore no longer need to dress like John le Carré’s Biker Hippie Rodeo Clown just to get a few extra stat points.
Phantom Liberty’s character design is stunning even in side missions. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/CD Projekt Red
Is it fair to judge this free update in a review of the paid expansion? I’m not sure. For Phantom Liberty’s part, it adds a sixth perk tree, Relic, with its own upgrade points. Relic offers different options for different playstyles, with abilities that enable auto-cloaking and vulnerability detection, although the main appeal for me is an upgrade to arm cyberware that makes punching people with your robot arms until they burst a viable tactic.
With or without the expansion, and even as someone who enjoyed Cyberpunk 2077 upon release, it’s clearly now much improved. Does that mean that Update 2.0 and/or Phantom Liberty make Cyberpunk 2077 perfect, or even bug free? No and no. I experienced, for example, a handful of animation glitches and one instance in which Idris Elba got stuck during a scripted combat encounter and I needed to reload to the last save. What’s changed, in my view, is that these issues now exist within acceptable bounds. I no longer feel like I have to caveat all my praise for the things the game gets right.
And it gets a lot right. When Phantom Liberty was first announced, I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t continuing V’s story onwards from the end of Cyberpunk 2077. Given all that ending entails, or can entail, I couldn’t see how a mid-game expansion could add anything of narrative significance. I needn’t have worried. One of Phantom Liberty’s great strengths is that, despite Dogtown’s secure borders, it isn’t ringfenced in any way from the rest of the story. You can leave Dogtown midway to take on a few missed sidequests, or give your gal Judy a call to discuss what you got up to with the President the night before. The result is an expansion that reflects, refracts and enriches the game around it. If you’ve never played Cyberpunk 2077 before and buy the expansion, Phantom Liberty is an absurdly lush, thrilling, 20-hour-long side quest; if you have played it before, it’s an unmissable opportunity to check in on old friends, and to make a few new ones, in Night City.
