Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
MSRP $30.00
“With a strong spy story and performances to match, Phantom Liberty gives Cyberpunk 2077 the extra chapter it needed.”
Pros
Superb world and stage design
Fantastic performances
Revamped gunplay
Everyone and all the pieces in Cybperunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, the sport’s long-awaited first DLC, is expendable. That contains everybody from the previous CEO of a personal army firm who’s at present in her third presidential time period to the rogue colonel straight out of Heart of Darkness who refuses to surrender management of a piece of Night City, in addition to the mercenary V, who’s caught within the center and solely in search of a approach to survive. People are little greater than instruments that, as soon as now not helpful to the individual one rung up on the sociopolitical ladder, can be tossed into the piles of trash lining the streets. No one is free within the New United State (NUSA), however the facade should be upheld on each stage.
Your freedom isn’t actual — liberty is however an phantasm — however nobody is keen to face that actuality.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty desires you to really feel like a pawn being led round by a carrot on a stick — one we all know V won’t ever attain because the story takes place earlier than the top of the sport correct. That conceit would usually diffuse any stress or stakes, however on this case, it provides to the DLC’s thematic energy. Your promised liberation is however a phantom. The motive you play alongside all the identical is as a result of the characters, world, and stakes all really feel actual.
Lords of Dogtown
Dogtown, the brand new space Phantom Liberty takes place in, by design must make some structural concessions to clarify why this a part of Night City wasn’t accessible till now. The narrative reply the sport gives goes above and past a couple of easy bits of lore. Developer CD Projekt Red really fleshes out a historical past that ties into the central battle. Dogtown is a walled-off, extremely restricted district in Night City that was basically annexed by Colonel Kurt Hansen throughout the Unification War because the militaristic tyrant merely refused to present it up. Once he established it as a worthwhile black market, the federal government now not felt a must do greater than maintain him contained inside his personal walled “utopia.”
CD Projekt Red
That uneasy peace is jeopardized when the president of the NUSA — who was additionally liable for that very same Unification War — is stranded in Dogtown. What unfolds is a powder keg of political, company, and private tensions that threaten to trigger a sequence response of penalties that can ripple from V’s aim of survival as much as the destiny of the complete nation. There aren’t any remoted components on this story. Every character has some historical past with the others, one thing to cover, one thing to achieve, or a motive to play you towards another person. Who you belief is as much as you, and the selections you make really feel something however weightless. By conserving the dimensions of the stakes balanced — from discovering the mysterious Songbird who guarantees to treatment your biochip downside to the destiny of the web at giant — I at all times felt invested and believed I used to be making an impression at the very least on a micro stage.
Dogtown itself is as dingy, soiled, and despondent as its inhabitants, however concurrently vigorous and shade. The streets are cramped, and piles of rubbish line the graffiti-marked buildings in a method that brings a way of realism and historical past to this pocket of dystopia. The extra cramped and constrained environments end in way more intricate ranges that permit for a excessive stage of freedom in the way you strategy every scenario. Everything and everybody you meet on this rundown gap is as convincing and plausible of their look as they’re in efficiency. Songbird, President Myers, Reed, and the complete supporting solid pull off an incredible feat of presenting their personalities and motivations whereas concurrently providing you with compelling threads you wish to pull on because the story unravels.
Cyberpunk 2077 is now the sport it ought to have been all alongside.
Phantom Liberty, together with the two.0 replace, is the fruits of CD Projekt Red’s efforts to rehabilitate the sport’s troubled launch. Having not performed since these early months earlier than any patches, coming into this growth lastly felt like the sport had reached the state it was at all times meant to. Aside from one occasion the place the sport saved as I used to be dying, sending me right into a perpetual demise loop till I loaded a previous save, I skilled few technical points throughout my playthrough. Everything, from the body price and physics to the AI, lastly feels secure. It might have taken almost three years, however Cyberpunk 2077 is now the sport it ought to have been all alongside.
A contemporary basis
Gameplay in Phantom Liberty is clearly constructed off of the bones of the unique launch, however it will get to shine right here. It’s nothing revolutionary by way of modifications or how the missions are formatted, however it has been tuned and tightened in a method that lastly clicks issues into place. Guns particularly really feel extra satisfying throughout the board, from their responsiveness to suggestions that’s distinctive to every mannequin. Swapping weapons now feels extra like altering personalities relatively than simply having a distinct price of fireside and seeing injury numbers showing above an enemy’s head. This alone makes selecting your strategy to every mission — when allowed — way more satisfying as you already know that every route accessible can be as compelling because the others. This isn’t a reinvention of or full sequel to what Cyberpunk 2077 was, however extra of a remaster of the mechanics to completely obtain the staff’s imaginative and prescient.
CD Projekt Red
Mission construction does undergo a bit from a whole lot of “hurry up and wait.” If you’re not invested within the story and characters, the usually prolonged conversations that precede many missions may simply change into tiring. From a high-level perspective, the complete collection of missions feels properly crafted by way of pacing. You will journey a curler coaster of small-scale encounters, share quiet moments with characters, get let free in an open setting to strategy as you would like, and obtain a pleasant punctuation mark of a cinematic motion sequence. The foremost missions alone pull me alongside from one to the subsequent naturally in the identical method an excellent TV present leaves me reaching for the distant to proceed to the subsequent episode.
CD Projekt Red set a excessive normal for itself after releasing its two expansions for The Witcher 3, and Phantom Liberty clears that bar. Despite being in a considerably compact zone, there are dozens of hours of content material right here between the 13 foremost missions, 17 facet gigs, and different non-obligatory content material to discover.
Play or get performed
Phantom Liberty payments itself as a spy thriller story of espionage and intrigue. In phrases of the narrative, characters, and mission-theming, that description holds true. In apply, gamers bounce forwards and backwards between probably the most bombastic set piece battles and tense noir meetups in shady bars the place they formulate plans to drag off traditional spy story plots. Many missions do maintain issues open-ended — go stealthy, use tech expertise, do some easy speaking, or put a bullet within the head of anybody with a well being bar — however that is rather more of a Mission Impossible than a Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I by no means felt like I used to be greater than 30 minutes away from a firefight, explosion, or set piece, applicable or not.
The world of Cyberpunk 2077 feels tailored for such a espionage thriller.
Players are given the liberty to begin Phantom Liberty with out touching the principle Cyberpunk 2077 expertise proper from the title display. Doing so will routinely stage V, distribute talent factors, and outfit them with a loadout of weapons and instruments. I hadn’t touched the sport since launch, and my file was lengthy gone, so I got here at this growth basically as a brand new participant. This just isn’t the best way to expertise Phantom Liberty. There aren’t any tutorials or refreshers on gameplay, not to mention the story or characters. I used to be thrown into Night City at some unspecified time, getting a name that used half-remembered lingo to recruit me into the plot, with the ghost of Keanu Reeves cracking smart within the background. Granted, this isn’t meant to be a participant’s first publicity to the Cyberpunk world, however it’s an choice. And that choice isn’t precisely accounted for.
Once acclimated, Phantom Liberty does add in a single main new talent tree to experiment with along with the huge rework of the prevailing ones as a part of the two.0 replace. That talent tree holds substantial talents, however they’d be for naught if the moment-to-moment gunplay hadn’t obtained such a strong improve.
CD Projekt Red
The world of Cyberpunk 2077 feels tailored for such a espionage thriller. The backdrop and lore of a dystopian future the place people have basically reached the singularity with know-how circulate seamlessly right into a story of subterfuge and conspiracy, simply because it does bombastic firefights and explosions. Every efficiency is top-notch, together with the character of Dogtown itself. Despite being walled off from the remainder of Night City, its tendrils attain out to each nook of the world in a plausible method that retains you feeling such as you’re nonetheless in the identical place and never shoveled off to DLC land the place nothing of significance is allowed to return in or out.
That’s what’s most spectacular about Phantom Liberty. I do know that I’m largely shackled inside the partitions of Dogtown, however CD Projekt makes use of these partitions as constructing blocks to additional make investments me within the characters and occasions, relatively than merely ignoring or making an attempt to color over them.
Cybperpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty was reviewed on PS5.
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