'Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty' Is Utterly Tremendous [REVIEW 4K]

Phantom Liberty the brand new DLC to cyberpunk 2077 is everything we were hoping that it would be it is an epic intense thrilling emotional roller coaster that is as Dynamic and refined as anyone could hope for it to be expectations have certainly been high considering that cdpr is still widely considered to be one of the best developers in the entire video game industry the original launch of cyberpunk 2077 certainly made people question their commitments to Quality and The Gamers experience but this expansion paired with the free 2.0 update that we're going to discuss as well in my mind serves as a testament to just how much of a fluke that really was almost every single part of cyberpunk 2077 has been significantly improved over the last few years and with the 2.0 update and this expansion it feels like a brand new game entirely you guys know me I've held cdpr's feet to the fire since the cyberpunk 2077 launch de debacle that it was and that should tell you just how good this expansion and the 2.0 update is that at this point I'm willing to say confidently that that was a fluke the quality exhibited here is so utterly remarkable it makes every other Studio out there right now look like they're not even trying now I'm not going to go into a ton of detail with the 2.0 update since I have a dedicated video discussing it however I do want to point out that the improvements to vehicle combat the new police system completely reworked perks and skill trees moving armor to cyberware systems and reworking that system as well in addition to the stamina being reworked and even animations when receiving Ripper doc work all culminate in a version of cyberpunk 2077 that feels much closer to a sequel than a free update seriously the fact that this 2.0 update is included for free on current gen consoles NPC is nothing short of amazing it is ridiculous how many Improvement have been made there were also certainly questions over the last few months since the updates announcement about whether there was a proper approach should you start the expansion with a previous save file or should you start from the very top of the game and with a new V and without a doubt I would say that you should start from the very beginning which is after all a very good place to start okay I'll shut up now I had to come on the 2.0 update really makes this feel like a new game especially if you haven't touched it since launch you will be shocked at just how improved everything is the new skill trees make combat feel much more like it belongs in an RPG compared to the base game originally now it really feels as though you can specialize in whatever playstyle you want whereas before it felt like you were being forced towards using Johnny's pistol a smart weapon and a sniper rifle but this time around I found myself specializing in totally separate ways in subsequent runs of the expansion in one run I was focused on long range damage with a sniper rifle leveling up pertinent stats and perks to give bonus headshot multiply tires and in another run I was focused on assault rifles and SMGs and I'm also going to be doing another run over on stream links in the description box below for my live channel here on YouTube with live stream highlights all of that stuff and on that run of the expansion I'm going to be focusing on melee combat primarily by way of the Mantis blades and other augmentations all of which have seen total revamps with the expansion and the 2.0 update enemy AI is also improved which is wonderful to see new additions like vehicle combat allowing you to shoot targets while still driving and the totally reworked resource system for upgrading augmentations and other equipment all come together to create a game that is familiar but really does feel fresh and new I've gone back and tried cyberpunk 2077 over the last few years occasionally just to see if it's at the point where I can recommend it and towards the end of last year I felt like they finally got to a point where it was impressive I think if you could get it on sale it was an easy recommend at that point but if price maybe not but seriously with all of the improvements coming with 2.0 and with the expansion as well if you choose to get that there is no doubt this is the cyberpunk 2077 game package that they wanted to deliver to begin with it just took them another two and a half three years to get it out the door but all that stuff is just tied up in the 2.0 update which is free and everybody's gonna get if they're on PS5 Xbox series consoles or PC playing on the 21st and onwards so what about the expansion itself once you're actually in the throes of the expansion after the First Act of the main story in the base game has been completed or any point after that you will be greeted with a brand new District called Dogtown adjacent to Pacifica this area is filled with new enemy encounters stalkers cyber psychos side missions gigs new items new Courier missions and airdrops new boss fights and even an additional skill tree that offers brand new ways of fighting tough enemies such as unlocking weak points that can be targeted which are generated dynamically based on the enemy and all of this is great but where the expansion really excels is in the narrative the plot and the story beats themselves I'm relatively impressed by throughout the expansion but I think the scale of the events here are what particularly struck me right from the start cdpr makes it clear that Phantom Liberty aims to fulfill the vision of cyberpunk 2077 in almost every way within the first two hours of the expansion I felt as though I had already experienced more epic set pieces and high production value action sequences than in the entirety of the base game as the expansion continues it only gets more epic in addition the writing acting and production values in general are all top-notch and frankly as I mentioned before it really does make it feel as though a lot of these other Studios out there aren't even trying because graphically narratively and in terms of the gameplay encounters themselves everything is so remarkable every new location every new character and every new side gig left me more impressed than the last on a sour note the final climactic mission of the expansion's main story did leave me a little underwhelmed I was expecting a big crazy huge boss fight but what you get is not actually that crazy or epic at least in my opinion even when I replayed it having made other decisions along the way through the story The Encounter was always underwhelming to me at least but I do want to say that the endings do change there are different variations of how this story can end up so I would encourage you if you're interested in playing through this multiple times try different choices try betraying this person saving that person executing that person and freeing them and you'll be surprised at just how much variability there is here it's it's actually pretty cool another sour note is that the expansion is on the shorter side for DLC coming from cdpr in my first run the main story only took me around 12 hours to get through while focusing on it pretty heavily doing a lot of side content you could probably get 20-ish hours out of the expansion all told maybe more if you're very methodical or playing on very high difficulty settings but paired with all of the other improvements coming in 2.0 I would guess that most players are going to be enjoying the base game over again from the start so their actual experience with the game is going to be a lot longer than just the 12 hours in this dlc's main story and as I mentioned there's also a good amount of side content to keep you busy in addition to dynamically generated content which we'll get into in just a minute in terms of the actual plot itself I thought it was interesting especially in the context of the base game itself I was surprised at just how well this story clicked into place within the events of the base game which just to answer the question because I know some people were wondering about this yes this does take place before the ending events of the main game so it's not like they picked one of the main story endings in the base game and then followed that canonically leading into this story this story just sort of comes out of nowhere when you start from the beginning of the game playing through all of a sudden all hell breaks loose and you get access to a new area it's super super cool how they do it and I won't spoil too many specifics though if you've watched the cinematic trailers and stuff I'm sure you can figure out what's going on in the story but it's well done it's very well done and as the developers have already made public depending on your choices within the expansion you can get access to an entirely New Ending which I did test and see and I actually found it pretty interesting I actually like it a good bit more than a couple of the endings in the base game that I discussed in my five hour ultimate critique of cyberpunk 2077 which I'll have linked below if you want to burn five hours listening to me ramble about cyberpunk 2077 go through the whole story and everything you know what if you need a refresher on the story that's a great place to check it out we do all of the endings go through all the main story stuff it's super fun but having said that just to be clear not everybody is going to see this additional ending it will depend on your choices within the expansion so choose carefully who you help and who you don't because it will matter oh my God I love being Coy like this like I I know something you don't oh I'm not going to go into it for spoiler reasons obviously but oh it there's a couple of really good moments I won't spoil but yeah there's a couple good beats in there now that being said there are a couple of small frustrations I have towards the story and plot of phantom Liberty but I can't actually discuss them without spoiling pretty much everything and I've tried I've gone back and forth on the script for this video adding stuff cutting it back out trying to figure out how we would show it or not show what I need to show to prove my point and I've just decided there's no way for me to do it without spoiling some of the coolest moments in the story so I'm just not gonna do that instead I will just say that it's probably 95 great with only five percent being left over for things that I would tweak or change to make things move along a little more smoothly but all told it's still remarkably impressive and my frustrations are very very minimal and if anything like if the story is 95 awesome and five percent kind of weren't were I think that's within the margin of error so to speak for this you know at that point it's probably mostly just personal subjective opinion and which case like who cares what I think you know if you enjoy it if you have fun with it go for it that's awesome dude all told the story is remarkably impressive and my frustrations are as I said very very minimal what's not minimal is my love for Idris Elba hey yo oh that sounded cooler in my head Idris Elba is of course the celebrity guest this time around and while Keanu Reeves does reprise his role as Johnny silverhand Idris Elba does really steal the show his take on a sleeper agent within night city is as nuanced and grounded as anyone could have hoped for his gravitas and precise line delivery helps carry the narrative to the player in a very compelling way every conversation every side quest and every part of the expansion had me captivated largely thanks to his presence in this story in addition to all of the loudatians I can Levy towards the game's Story the game also literally looks better than it ever has almost all of the footage you're going to be seeing throughout this video has been recorded in the RTX overdrive mode with path tracing and path reconstruction enabled thanks to dlss 3.5 all of that is just a really complicated fancy way of saying that if you have a supercomputer you can get this game to look better than pretty much any video video game in the history of mankind and I think you can really tell by looking at this footage the neon lights bounce off of walls back down onto characters in realistic ways that would make even the most experienced cinematic lighting designer blush and there were countless times where I was exploring Dogtown or other parts of night City just taking in the sights and scenery around me it's amazing how much this lighting system can improve your experience with the game and with dlss 3.5 and the ray reconstruction that they can do with it somehow using crazy math magic that I don't understand you can end up with a version of night city that is more visually impressive than I ever thought it could be you know that feeling when you're playing a video game and there's like a cut scene and then the cutscene ends and gameplay starts but you don't realize it's gameplay yet because it's so smoothly transitioned to gameplay and it still looks so good you think it's still part of the cutscene that's an experience that's pretty rare nowadays you feel it with like Red Dead Redemption 2 like The Last of Us Part Two a lot of twos and in this case in cyberpunk 2077 I felt this all the time because there were countless times while playing Phantom Liberty where I just sat here like a dummy just taking it in feeling great about myself oh this cutscene is really weird it's just I'm just standing there what's happening and I realize it's gameplay again it's awesome but enough ogling oogling I don't know what the word is enough of that let's talk about some of the things that I actually have problems with because no game or expansion is perfect and cyberpunk wallets greatly improved and while I think Phantom Liberty does a tremendous job of bringing this whole story back around full circle and it kind of completes the vision of cyberpunk 2077 as it originally was there still are some weird things that I encountered it's minimal but let's talk about them well my experience with the 2.0 patch and Phantom Liberty was generally really polished there were some weird bugs like this one where somehow something touches me and you'll see I just kind of instantly warp right there into rafters underneath like an overpass and I just can't move I I can't get out I can't do anything I'm just stuck here so I had to start shooting and try to aggro people to come and kill me so I would reset I could have also gone into settings and loaded back out but I was wondering if them like shooting me or blowing me up or something would knock me out but no no you're just you're just stuck I have no idea what caused this if we rewind like it's not really clear what happened I just warp over I I have no idea but this happened once and it was bad enough that I had to die to reset so I guess it would count by some definitions as a soft lock I encountered it so I'm going to share it with you but I'm not going to pretend as though this was like a common thing this was probably a one-off fluke just trying to be fair and then this one is like really really stupid but basically read or as you might know Idris Elba he had this bug where he would just constantly be holding his pistol even across like reboots of my computer restarting the game pop into different saves and stuff he's always holding his pistol in his right hand even at times like this where he's typing on the computer you can see it in his hands still and you might be thinking Luke that's just how it's scripted it's supposed to be that way he's just so on it and so rah-rah American he always has a pistol in his hand well no as you can see here his gun just starts like randomly floating behind his back and then like based on his hand movement it swings around the scene you see it behind him right there it's just floating I don't know why but his his pistol just has a miners on there it's on the floor zipping around there now it's floating in the air I don't know what is going on with it but this was a bug that I encountered that lasted through pretty much the entire expansion I think about a quarter of the way through I noticed he was always holding a pistol even at times where it seemed really inappropriate to do so like while driving a car and then I noticed in every single scene after that the behavior of the pistol just got more and more erratic and I just don't know why so this one was more distracting and disruptive but is it game breaking like no it's stupid but it it's at least kind of funny just the whole time I was like it's so it's so American you know he just always has the pistol even at one point we're on the basketball court talking about our feelings and he still has the pistol in his hand as he's like sitting and thinking about stuff it's like so oh man it was so stupid but yeah anyway and the only other problem I had while playing was this where I'm actually exploring regular night City and you see this like weird void pit to the left and then everything loads in last minute just give you a little rewind on that like is this a big deal no it's just like a thing failed to load in and then it pops in real quick not that big of a deal and it's outside of the expansion area so it seems like a one-off and it's literally the only time I noticed pop-in issues in the entire time I was replaying the game and the expansions and everything so again a very very minor thing but because I make the promise to you guys that when I encounter bugs or glitches and stuff I'm gonna show you even if I don't personally think it's a big deal because that's kind of the point of trying to be transparent during game reviews if I see something I'll show you even if devs are like I'm gonna fix it because I don't know if they're gonna fix it you know before launch and we've had a couple games recently where I had a lot of bugs told the devs about them and they were still there when the game came out so I'm gonna just throw this out there I think all of the bugs and things that I encountered were very minimal and they were all one-offs it's not like I was noticing repeated behaviors or issues so I guess make of it what you will but these were certainly present one of my other disappointments from the expansion was just how lackluster the dynamic events were they talked a lot about these in the lead-up to the expansion's launch how there were going to be some activities that are perpetual and basically never end this is very similar to Fallout 4's a settlement needs your help quests where dynamically they will generate new objectives for you to engage with depending on where you are in Dogtown what you've already completed and so on these mostly take the form of these supply drops and while it initially sounds interesting that as you explore Dogtown you'll see a supply drop happen and then you can swoop in to claim the resources for yourself you will probably be surprised at just how frequently these are repeated in the exact same way these containers drop in the exact same locations time and time and time again in my first run of the expansion which took me around 15 hours while also doing side content I took care of this particular drop at least five times on each occasion I I was either walking or driving nearby when I saw the big red smoke plume coming up over the trash Heap in the distance and then I ran up cleared out all of the enemies in that area took the loot for myself and ran off and that really was it again every single time it drops in the exact same place the enemies arranged themselves in the exact same way and while the resources and rewards changed somewhat depending on where you are or what you're doing it didn't make it feel any less repetitive after doing this a few times I just started to tune out these supply drops and only chase them down when I needed crafting components or weapons to sell to vendors it's a fine addition and I appreciate more content than less content but this is far from the cool inclusion that I initially hoped it was instead it's just more procedural content and I have had my fill after playing Starfield frankly but all told I feel that Phantom Liberty is a triumphant comeback for cyberpunk 2076 7 and cdpr as a whole it's clear they haven't just been sitting on their hands over the last couple of years but have rather been hard at work trying to remedy their mistakes with 2077's launch what exactly happened that caused that terrible launch is still unclear I think even to cdpr themselves but the game as it stands now with the 2.0 update and the expansion is nothing short of utterly tremendous cyberpunk 2077 when paired with Phantom Liberty feels like the game they were trying to make from the start and it is an easy recommendation from me to you if you enjoyed any part of the original game this expansion is going to blow you away and even if you're not sold on it or you don't want to throw 30 bucks at them just yet I totally understand that try the free update try the 2.0 patch that you don't have to pay for and just see how improved the game really is it honestly feels like an entirely different game maybe not quite a sequel but like a 1.5 reboot of the game or a 2.0 I guess reboot of the game it is familiar but feels distinctly different in only positive ways and to answer the elephant in the room question that probably nobody is thinking but me how does this stack up to their other expansions and DLC for say The Witcher 3. well personally I would put it below hearts of stone for narrative reasons mainly because I'm a sucker for hearts of stone and that narrative it's just oh chefs guess it's so good but I would actually put it above blood and wine above Tucson and that whole expansion not because I don't like Tucson but just because I feel like what they bring to the table to the cyberpunk package with Phantom Liberty improves the base game so much I just have to give it a little bit of credit I just think it's wildly impressive it it's so good but with all that said I'm actually gonna start a brand new save file in cyberpunk on very hard on the hardest difficulty because the DLC and the 2.0 update I think makes the game a little bit more easy than it was before it's my personal opinion you'll have to let me know what you think when you get your hands on it but I'm gonna go do that which for me is kind of like the best compliment I can give to a game if I want to keep playing it after review that's that's pretty High Praise because normally I'm sick and tired of games by the time I've grinded through them over the course of a few days to get ready for a review so Props to cdpr it seems like they're back in Tip-Top shape and I'm here for it thank you for watching I love you all like the video share it with a friend or do whatever you're an adult you can figure it out I trust you much love I'll see you in the next one hugs and kisses bye-bye

Channel: Luke Stephens

Views: 353,851

Keywords: luke stephens, cyberpunk 2077, phantom liberty, review, gameplay, dlss 3.5, luke stephens phantom liberty

Id: s5X2i3ohCg8

Length: 22min 56sec (1376 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 25 2023