So, is Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty any good? I’ve
played it, this video would be kind of useless if I hadn’t, and there are a few things you really
need to know going into this new expansion and the new 2.0 update. This review’ll be spoiler free,
and of course thanks to CDPR for sending a code my way last week. Now, bugs, main story, side quests,
gameplay changes. That’s what we’re covering, in that order and quickly, so you know what you need
to fast, and there’s a lot of good news, plus a little bad. I’m starting with bugs because that’s
still the reputation Cyberpunk has had a hard time shaking, even though the game has been in pretty
solid shape for some time, people still think bugs when they think Cyberpunk, so the question now
is whether Phantom Liberty is a polished day 1 experience, or if you’d be better off waiting
for a few patches to smooth things out. Well, CDPR obviously wanted to squash any bug talk as
hard as humanly possible, because there are hardly any — I had one possessed cop who levitated away
from Night City into the great beyond, and also there was a character that had her phone filter
voice half the time even when speaking in person, which was actually kind of annoying, but that
was about it in what is a pretty long expansion. Speaking of how long this thing is, a lot of that
time will of course be spent with the main quest, the centerpiece of Phantom Liberty and the
main reason you’d decide to buy it… or not, and let’s talk about it. By the way, the gameplay
you’re seeing isn’t what I recorded, I can’t show that yet, only my own screenshots plus what
I’ve been sent by CDPR, but I’m telling you, there’s nothing to hide performance wise, at
least not on a solid PC. Cyberpunk just runs beautifully these days, and on the same settings
I was using before I noticed zero difference in terms of my in-game experience on the last patch
and now the new 2.0 update. Anyway, the main quest is what you need to hear about, and while I have
some mixed thoughts on the side quests, I just have to say that Phantom Liberty’s main story is
maybe the best thing Cyberpunk 2077 has to offer, if it’s not at the very top it’s close. Listen,
if you’ve been on board with what CDPR have been selling in the trailers, you know, a spy
thriller with really high stakes, then you’re getting exactly that, done very well, and for a
story like this, the characters need to be great, and thankfully there isn’t a single miss in the
main questline. Phantom Liberty, at its core, is a character-driven slow burn with bursts of
absolute insanity. It really takes its time when it needs to, yet every time things ramp up the
boundaries are pushed a little further until you start to wonder if there’s anywhere left to
go, and as it continually turns out, the answer is always yes. Couple other non-spoiler thoughts
before the side content, Idris Elba is a serious standout here. Do not worry for even a second, his
character couldn’t possibly be further from just awkwardly shoving a celebrity in a game, and I was
also very pleasantly surprised by how much Johnny is in Phantom Liberty. In both the main and side
content he pops up almost as frequently as he did in the base game, which is impressive because, as
mentioned, this is a pretty long expansion. I’ve done all main and side content, and between
everything I ended up getting a little over 30 hours worth of playtime. I’d say right around
half of that is main quest material, and the rest of your time will be spent with the new gigs and
other side content, most of which take place in the new Night City district this expansion adds,
DogTown. Now, you’ll be happy to hear that one weakness pre-Phantom Liberty side content had is
completely wiped out with the expansion content. In the base game, I felt that the gigs, which
are the little mercenary contracts you take on, were all over the place in terms of quality. Some
of them were really fleshed out with characters to talk to, interesting decisions to be made, and
just a lot going for them. Some of the others though had nothing going on, I mean one in every
3 would have a setup along the lines of “hey V, something interesting already happened at this
location and you completely missed it. Need you to go there and retrieve item”, and that was it,
you’d spend more time getting to the gig marker on your map than it would take you to do the entire
thing. Phantom Liberty, thankfully, has none of that, there are 10 new gigs, and you can really
sink your teeth into each and every one. I mean I was going through my footage and most of them are
20-30 minutes each, and one thing I really liked, and I think you will too, was that this expansion
constantly goes out of its way to follow up on the choices you make during the side content, and I
don’t just mean a throwaway text on V’s phone. No, there were a few times where days later in-game
I was getting a solid bit of extra content that just wouldn’t have happened had I handled a gig
differently, which makes me want to go back and try the other outcomes, I think I’ll gonna get
another five hours out of this expansion doing just that. On the whole, the Phantom Liberty
gigs are really good, I didn’t think all of them were all home runs or anything, a few were
forgettable, but I’d say half of a top ten gigs list would be filled with Phantom Liberty content,
as the better ones are the best you’ll find in the entire game. As for the other side quests, meaning
the random jobs you can come across, well there’s not many significant ones, just a handful. A
couple were pretty good, one not so much, and also there was this quest that was so bam stupid it was
amazing. I won’t spoil any of it, but it’s a very unserious job, at least compared to everything you
get mixed up with, and during that quest you get so much commentary from Johnny, he won’t shut up
and needs you to know his thoughts on this very dumb situation you’ve found yourself in the middle
of. Oh also, I have a quick side content warning, just so you don’t make the same mistake I did: I
am telling you, if you’re buying Phantom Liberty and plan to start from one of your old saves
where you’ve already done everything, which was my situation, don’t blow through all of the
new side content right when it becomes available. Some of it, sure, go ahead, you’re meant to, but
there will be multiple moments where you’ll need something to do in between main quest activities,
and where skipping time doesn’t seem to count, unless that was a bug, I don’t think so though,
and in those moments, two in particular I’m thinking of, it would’ve been really nice if
I had any side quests left. I didn’t though, so it was kind of awkward waiting it out, and
I had to fill the time with the new endless car missions. So, Phantom Liberty, not the 2.0 update,
adds new dynamic content all around Night City. These come in two main forms, one being random
combat encounters where you steal some cargo, I believe those are limited to Dogtown, but
the other type are mini-gigs where you steal a vehicle and deliver it for one of the base game
fixers. The vehicle missions pop up everywhere, and I planned to say that I really didn’t
like these, but I’ve just now found out that I’m either the unluckiest person on planet
Earth, or I potentially ran into a problem, I don’t really know. So, according to the little
brief I was sent about Phantom Liberty, there are supposed to be different types of vehicle missions
you cycle through - you know, one where you’re chased and have to fight off or lose enemy AI,
one where you need to beat a timer across the map, and one where some hacking is required to secure
the vehicle in the first place. Me though, I did 7 of these random vehicle missions, and somehow I
got the same one every single time, the chase one, and with that in mind I was just dreading doing
these after a certain point, because they got so repetitive, which obviously wouldn’t have been
a issue at all had I not ended up with the same type 7 times in a row. You might ask why I kept
doing them if I dreaded the experience, and the answer besides just needing to fill some time, is
that these aren’t as optional as you might think. Phantom Liberty has changed the way you acquire
new vehicles - instead of needing to go to a car’s physical location to buy it, you instead have
sales terminals around Night City. There you just select the car you want to buy on a screen,
and then it’s added to your inventory at which point you can call it to your location. I assume
those terminals are available even without Phantom Liberty post 2.0, because the base game cars are
also for sale there, but the new vehicles from the expansion, or at least, the cool ones, are going
to be locked from purchase when you start. How do you earn the privilege of being able to buy
them? Well, by doing those randomly generated car missions, and you’ll have to do quite a few,
because after 7 most of the cars I wanted to buy were still locked. Just something to keep in mind,
because in my case I’d gone through a third of the expansion wondering where all the new cars were
before realizing what I was supposed to do. Also, worth pointing out that you do earn a huge
discount from the car missions, as every time you complete one you build up a coupon to use on
whatever car you want. I say build up because you get one discount at a time which keeps improving
as you deliver stolen vehicles, and once you use it on a vehicle it resets to zero percent and you
can build it up again. On the topic of building something up, why don’t we switch over to the
free 2.0 update, which is the culmination of everything CDPR have been working towards since
Cyberpunk’s launch, which some might say was less than ideal. For over two years now, this game has
been getting patch after patch working out bugs, but, gameplay wise Cyberpunk had changed very very
little from launch, that is, until now. Almost all gameplay changes and additions are completely free
with Patch 2.0, with the exception of a couple small things like the level cap being raised to
account for the expansion XP and also something story-related I won’t talk about to be safe, but
just about everything else costs nothing. Now, I said this over on Twitter, and I’m repeating it
here because it sums it up for me, but when trying out Patch 2.0, and by extension Phantom Liberty
if you’re buying it, you will never, not even for a moment, wonder what it was CDPR have been doing
the past couple of years. The proof is absolutely everywhere, it’s impossible to miss, and if you’ve
been following what CDPR have been promising from this update, well, you won’t be disappointed
because they absolutely deliver. I think CDPR have been very careful with what they’ve hyped up
for Patch 2.0, because they didn’t want another launch situation, so what’s been promised is
exactly what you get, and none of it’s half baked, they’ve taken their time. The police are
far more aggressive with escalating tactics, combat AI is notably improved, fighting from a
vehicle is no longer a barely functioning mess, you can even quickhack enemy vehicles now, and man
have they refined, improved and streamlined almost every system related to improving your build,
and not just in subtle quality of life ways, it’s all been torn down to nothing and redone.
The skill tree has been dramatically bettered, everything is sensibly organized now, and you
can build way further into whatever you want to specialize in because there are tons of new ways
to play with dozens of newly introduced perks, and I don’t mean a dozen, there are a ton. Throughout
my 30+ hours with Phantom Liberty and this update I was just crosseyed because every 18 seconds I
was wanting to try a different build that wasn’t possible pre 2.0, and swapping playstyles is
something this update makes incredibly easy. All of your skill points are fully refundable with 0
drawback, just click one button to unlearn a skill you don’t want anymore and reinvest it wherever
you want. They’ve also taken mechanics that never should’ve been connected to skill trees and just
made them available by default - most importantly, crafting. You don’t have to throw away a ton of
your hard-earned skill points for the privilege of crafting anymore, that system is just available
to you. Armor is no longer tied to random pieces of clothing, instead it’s just built into your
Cyberwear, again, things are streamlined. Related to Cyberwear, and this is huge, you no longer have
to bumble around all of night city checking every single Cyberpwear slot at every single ripperdoc
to find the best equipment - nope, all of them have everything, so you know what your options
are instead of the guessing game that was in place before. Also, when you install new Cyberwear, you
actually have to undergo surgery, you get a little post-op animation, which is a nice new touch of
immersion. All of these reworks and additions just serve to really make the gameplay feel like it’s
much closer to living up to what a setting like Night City should offer a person, where the
options would be near limitless. Really, the combat and related changes are the main highlights
of 2.0, and I’ll be doing more in-depth videos in a few days, so feel free to subscribe if you’d
like to see those.Overall, 2.0 is a fantastic update, it takes a game that’s been out for a few
years with its fair share of problems, and refines it into a significantly better version of itself.
I want to stress that last part though - this is a refined version of the game we’ve had for over 2
and a half years. If you go into 2.0 expecting a brand new game, or for this update to transform
the experience into whatever launch expectation the trailers from half a decade ago might’ve given
you, then this isn’t that, not at all, you’ll be disappointed, and one thing it doesn’t do is
change the interactibility of the open world, that remains more or less how it’s always been.
The best way I can put it is that 2.0 makes this game feel like an alternate reality version of
Cyberpunk where instead of releasing what they had in December 2020, they looked at it, delayed
the release for some time and focused entirely on shining up the game they’d already made and
addressing systems and mechanics that were messy or half baked and could reasonably be fixed. I’m
not saying any of this as a negative by the way, which I assume is obvious, but what I am saying
is that if you see a pre-release video or article that says “oh, this is basically a completely
new game” or “Update 2.0 makes Cyberpunk unrecognizable to what we had before”, well, no…
just no. Saying things like that is just asking for people’s expectations to far exceed what CDPR
have promised this update to me. Ultimately this is the same game, just a bit better. Cyberpunk
was pretty good before this patch anyway, though it had some rough spots, and what 2.0
does is address not all, but much of what needed it most. Add Phantom Liberty into the mix, and
this is a bam good week for Cyberpunk fans. Well, that’s all for today, if you enjoyed this review
consider leaving a like as that’s how YouTube decides what’s worthy, and I will see you in what
comes next, which should be a few more Phantom Liberty videos. Thanks to the channel’s Patrons as
always for their support, and that’s it, see ya.
