I strongly recommend: Cyberpunk 2077 (and Phantom Liberty) - Review

this video is brought to you by nvidia's RTX gpus powering technological leaps like full raate tracing supported by the allnew dlss 3.5 together with Nvidia and orus we've actually worked with an Australian PC Builder to build a PC that can run cyber Punk at the absolute Max settings taking advantage of all of nvidia's new tech to make night City look better than it ever has before if you want to learn more about that Tech or see how that build came together then stick around to the end of the video to learn more the release of cyberpunk 2077 back in 201 20 was a heady time this was after all one of the most hyped games in the history of video games releasing at a time when we had absolutely no reason to doubt city project red would deliver everything they promised and then some I mean this was at a point in time when city project red had delivered us two strong RPGs in the form of The Witcher 1 and 2 and one of the best RPGs in the history of video games in the form of The Witcher 3 it was a massive beautiful content Rich game with Incredible writing and characters two remarkable DLCs that were better than most Standalone RPGs were offering at the time and CD project red did it all without any in-game purchases battle passes or any of the [ __ ] that was taken over video games at around that time so when city project red tweeted out [ __ ] like we'll leave the greed to others we believe them because we had no reason to doubt them little did we know what was to come now there's no point in recounting the circumstances of that Infamous launch you know the details I know the details history will long remember the details but I do think the circumstances of that launch made it really difficult to have good conversations about what cyber Punk was and was not take my review for example I mean according to Reddit I apparently said that cyber Punk was technically Flawless it was the greatest RPG of all time it runs perfectly on last gen consoles and you should not only pre-order it but you should buy two copies one for yourself and one for your nan the reality was that while I loved cyberp Punk and I felt it delivered on many fronts I also called it more an action game than anything else as its RPG systems were either weak or bust Ed I was disappointed with how little cyber Punk engaged with more thought-provoking futurist themes I found the combat to be really enjoyable but ultimately pretty lacking in depth in addition to all of that I actually didn't upload that review on the Embargo because city project red said we weren't allowed to use our own footage only their provided b-roll I refused to do that believing that b-roll to be dishonest which it was I called City Project Read out for refusing to provide console review code I had a 13-minute block diverted to PC performance and and I actually concluded my review by saying that as much as I personally love cyber punk I recommend people hold off purchasing it until it is fixed still despite that whenever my name comes up on uh Reddit about any topic there's invariably going to be some person that's like I'll never trust him again after cyber Punk sure part of this is me being a little defensive and frustrated with how that review has been mischaracterized and wanted to set the record straight but part of me is also trying to paint a picture of a time when there was so much anger about cyber Punk that it was nearly impossible to talk about its strengths and weaknesses without that conversation going completely off the rails and I get it city project red pulled some real [ __ ] [ __ ] back then and people had every right to be angry and to this day plenty of people are still angry refusing to buy into the whole Redemption Arc discourse that has come to define the way we now talk about cyber Punk so with the release of phantom Liberty I said to myself that I don't want to just play the expansion I want to replay the entire game from start to finish and I want to really look at the parts of the game that haven't changed with update 2.0 or with the new content bundled with Phantom Liberty now that the noise of that disastrous launch is passed and the game is now fixed I wanted to look at those old quest lines and missions and characters and Burrows and ask what type of game was cyber Punk really and how well do those core unchanged elements hold up but I also wanted to see and experience everything new here and there's a lot update 2.0 is such a drastic overhaul of the game that it absolutely has has a transformative impact on the overall cyber Punk experience pruning back unnecessary clutter and adding Essential Elements rips straight from what we imagine Life as a Netrunner or a ched up MC might be is this the game it should have been at large question mark in many ways yes but update 2.0 also reminds us How Deeply baked some of cyber Punk's core issues are to the point where the only place we might reasonably look for them to be addressed is in a sequel and then there's the Phantom Liberty campaign in Dogtown offering up anent entirely new cast of characters to meet and location to explore they're at times absolutely inspired offering scenarios and set pieces that feel like a massive step up over what the rest of the game has to offer delivering a deeper and more compelling cyber Punk fantasy to sink ourselves into but Phantom Liberty is still held back by the things that hold back the base game and unlike the base game I think it struggles to create the emotional connection that serves as the Bedrock foundation for the rest of the game's major story arcs much like the Bond films that inspire it Phantom Liberty is cool but also cold now look this is a big intro so let me be really clear about the thesis of this review coming back to this game for the first time since launch and being able to view it with clearer Eyes unobstructed by hype or hostility I came to realized that I love this game more than I did at launch but not because of the changes or improvements rather I came to realize that the things I always loved about cyberp Punk were always really [ __ ] good and clearing the decks around them by fixing bugs and rebalancing game systems has let those core elements shine cyber Punk has always had plenty of problems and it still does but the things that gets right these characters these set pieces this city you can't get them anywhere else not like this cyber Punk is a one-of-a-kind experience and booting it up again after all these years the promise of night City waiting for me it just felt so good to be back so by now you'll have likely heard that when it comes to the technical performance of cyberpunk 2077 the game is fixed but I don't want to take that as just red I want to show you how this game actually runs across different Hardware setups and in particular I want to showcase where cyber Punk has landed because this has gone from being a very broken AAA release to being the single best looking video game on the market and a technological Powerhouse that feels a full generation ahead of what most other games are delivering right now before we get to that let's do the bugs first so I don't want to shock anyone but at launch uh cyber Punk was a little buggy well and truly beyond what we might expect from your typical systemically driven open world game these were Bethesda level bugs but without the charm T posing NPCs textures not loading in insane physics sending cars flipping across the skyline for three years now city project red have been deploying bug fixes for this game I put about 60 hours into this recent playthrough and I'm not exaggerating when I say that I experienced a handful of bugs all of them minor none of them impeding progress or requiring a restart or shattering my immersion during important moments cuz that was actually the big one for me when I played it back at launch I didn't really care that there was some NPCs who would T POS or whatever what I really cared about was when I was in the middle of some big important DNM with Judy but her model was glitching out making it impossible to take the scene seriously that's the stuff that really messed with my cyberpunk enjoyment and I can tell you that for me that never once happened throughout my playthrough now I don't want to create the impression that cyber Punk is Flawless because it's not you will absolutely bump into those minor bugs where NPCs are doing stupid [ __ ] but if your experiences anything like mine then these moments will be few and far between and when it comes to bugs the contrast between the current state versus the launch product it's like two totally different games that that held a lot of significance for me when it came to quests because there were actually a number of quests that I was unable to complete at launch because they were just straight up broken one quest line in particular was so busted that the bartender that I was looking for was actually standing outside the bar not realizing that there was no bar that he was leaning on and the other NPCs that I needed to track down they just didn't spawn in it was totally busted but now being able to complete that Quest it was great because it turned out to be one of the more interesting side quests in the whole game and there was actually a call back to it in Phantom Liberty it's just one example of the way that bugs smothered cyberp Punk's many worthwhile moments and how with those bugs now clear we get to experience those moments as city project red had always intended them so cyber Punk is by and large bug-free at this point but what about the more goofy aspects of the game design that weren't necessarily bugs but there were clearly parts of the game that were pretty broken we're talking things like crowd behavior and pathing how NPCs respond to threats how they negotiate track traffic how the police system works Etc well most of that's been fixed too NPCs will still walk fairly aimlessly but they don't path back and forth in such obvious ways they also don't pile into each other as they once did creating comical meat pileups on the sidewalk now they're more aware of other people and they'll do their level best to avoid each other traffic is another thing in the launch game if you parked your car in the middle of the road and left it there then traffic would just stop around you the whole city would just stand still since then NPCs have clearly had a few driving lessons and will now move around you to keep traffic flowing even if you choose to park like a diplomat living in New York City as for the police stuff we will come back to that when we talk about update 2.0 so what about performance well there's quite a bit to talk about here actually so one of the big talking points with relation to update 2.0 and Phantom Liberty is that city project red have ditched last gen consoles the update and new content will only shipped to current gen hardware and PCs and PC system requirements are slightly higher this time around is this a betrayal of last gen console owners I mean sure partly but it certainly pales in comparison to how dirty city project red did last gen console owners at launch I remember walking out of the behind closed door session at E3 2018 that was the very first time that anyone had seen cyber Punk gameplay and I turned to my brother and I says there is no [ __ ] way they are going to be able to get that game running on Kent gen consoles fast forward 2 years and we got one of the worst console releases in gaming history to the point where Sony delisted the game for more than 6 months do you know how badly you have to [ __ ] up for a platform holder to do that point is this game was never meant to be on last gen Hardware city project red should have bit the bullet on that fact years ago but they're biting it now it does result in a better product that will age more gracefully but it is a reminder of how much city project red [ __ ] over those last gen console owners so how does Cyber punk run on current gen consoles well I spent some time with it on Xbox series X and I got to say it's not bad there's a performance mode option targeting 60 FPS which does a decent job of hitting that number but you'll definitely notice some dips from time to time there's also a r tracing option that targets 30 FPS but to be honest having played this game on upwards of 100 frames a second on PC I just couldn't handle 30 as impressive as rate tracing is 30 FPS is just too high a price to pay I didn't manage to test it out on PS5 but according to digital Foundry performance that is even better with slightly better resolutions and image quality nothing deal breaking but a small bump that an enthusiasts might note bottom line if you want to play cyber Punk on a current gen console you can do so with confidence it's stable it hits the target frame rate more often than not and it looks pretty damn impressive while doing it one of the interesting things to occur since the release of cyberpunk is the rise of handheld PCS this is a category that basically didn't exist back in 2020 but thanks to devices like the steam deck and the Asus Rog Ally this is now a big part of the way people play PC games so can you play cyberp Punk on these devices absolutely this is me playing on on Steam deck and city project red have actually provided a dedicated steam deck preset which will get you a fairly solid is 30fps again not the frame rate I'd prefer but I'm playing cyberp Punk on a goddamn handheld I mean come on you can push that frame rate much higher with some tweaking but you'll lose a lot in terms of frame consistency the Asus Rog Ally is actually able to push upwards of 50 FPS but only if you plug it in drop the resolution and tweak graphical settings quite a bit so yeah cyber Punk on a handheld man it's more than possible so long as you're okay with small text and 30 FPS that brings us to PC performance I tested this on two machines the first is an RTX 280 TI with an AMD ryzen 7 3700 X these specs put this machine are just above the recommended specs for Phantom Liberty if I want to play at 1080p High settings 60 FPS so can you hit that frame rate uh yes broadly yes but you definitely have to expect some dips here or there cyber Punk was essentially a launch game for the 30 series generation of gpus and tries it might to keep up the 280 TI is starting to show its age regardless you can absolutely enjoy cyberpunk on Hardware at or near this level city project red are being pretty straight up with their recommended specs here so that brings us to topend PC hardware and this is where cyberp Punk's technology Legacy comes into Focus if you have been following graphical hardware and graphical processing Technologies over the last few years then you have probably had cyber Punk installed on your PC because not only was it the best place to test these Technologies it was the stage on which many of these Technologies debuted as I said the 30 series arrived just in time for cyberpunk DSS2 was in its infancy when cyberpunk shipped dlss 3 debuted in cyberpunk and basically doubled its frame rate and just this month dlss 3.5 debuted in cyberpunk providing a performance uplift and a cleaner AI reconstructed image most importantly path tracing debuted in cyberpunk tricky to explain this one but but it's a very big deal it's a way more ambitious Way of simulating Light and it is so impactful that it genuinely transforms certain locations and scenes this game looks absolutely unfuckingbelievable at this point it always did but path tracing has pushed it right over the top and this is now the best looking video game on the market no other game has this amount of geometry this well lit no other game full stop that's it to properly explain and showcase it is its own like 45 minute video but it is absurd how good this looks and using DSS 3.5 and frame generation I was able to max out every setting including path tracing and I was getting over 100 FPS while playing at 4K yes I know that is not a native frame rate it is frame generated but honestly I don't care because I'm not getting any more input latency and DSs 3.5 makes the image look super clean so it's like when we think about cyberp Punk's technical State the first thing we usually think about is bugs fair enough absolutely but there was this parallel track to that where city project red were working with GPU manufacturers to make cyber Punk the absolute Pinnacle of graphical Fidelity home to the most bleeding edge technology and city project red did that like at every point in its life cycle cyber Punk was a technology Powerhouse that led the way for other games to follow that is one of the things that I always loved about this video game it was a PC game that tried to push the PC platform forward and as much as it should be remembered for its Brokenness and bugginess it should also absolutely be remembered for its ambition and its technical Excellence as well it's okay [Applause] [ __ ] in some ways night City never changes as I mentioned during the intro cyberpunk 2077 launch was a lot so much so that it was difficult to have good conversations about the game the spectacle of that launch made for a very polarizing discourse where anyone who claimed to love cyber Punk was being accused of excusing city project red or letting them off the hook and similarly a lot of the more meaningful critiques about cyber Punk's weaknesses as a game were being overshadowed by the discussions about bugs and Technical performance and all of that sort of stuff particular particularly on last gen consoles update 2.0 and the Phantom Liberty expansion both refine and expand the game considerably but they still only represent a small portion of the overall cyber Punk offering the majority of it is still the base game the story of v and Johnny chained together in an unlikely and reluctant partnership fighting to find a way to survive while all around them various factional Forces fight for control of night City if someone were to play cyberpunk for the very first time today or 10 years from now their overall impression of it is going to be shaped far more by these base game components than by anything that update 2.0 or Phantom Liberty added so that's what I wanted to experience again free from the noise of launch with the benefit of hindsight and with all the technical aspects polished to a brilliant shine I wanted to see what sort of game cyberpunk 2077 really was and explore how well those core components have aged and will age so what type of game is cyberpunk 2077 then well it's an action game with some very light and often dysfunctional RPG elements it's essentially a heist game where each of the missions V undertakes are carefully planned out in a mission briefing beam directly into her brain and then you follow the plan until something eventually [ __ ] up which it always does and then there's a Mad Dash to survive a frantic shootout a car chase a tent Showdown where a friend is being held at gunpoint and so on it's often a pic Victory where the job gets done but something or someone important is lost along the way giving characters something to feel guilty about in the downtempo dialogue exchanges that typically follow this doesn't mean being cynical by the way I actually love this Rhythm but that's what it is it's a seesaw of heart pounding heists followed by heartwrenching deep and meaningful when I first played through cyber punk I don't think I gave these Heist and these set pieces as much credit as they deserve the Coney Plaza job and how all that goes down is such powerful Act One storytelling the raid on clouds to rescue Evelyn is so well set up the desert raid on the arisaka transport is so exciting when you're belting across the bad lands trying to keep up with the ship PanAm just koed with a shoulder mounted missile the parade sequence man the combination of visual Splendor intense sauge Focus action is absolutely top tier there's so many more that I could list but the framing of each of these missions is often remarkable and they never let up there isn't a single one of these big setpiece showdowns that is halfast or similar to another I think city project red really understood that these moments were the focus of their game and you can tell that they poured huge amounts of resources effort and Imagination into each of them playing through them again I also came to appreciate the different type of fantasy that each of these scenarios deliver each of them their own genre exploring different themes the events in the desert with PanAm are like a Mad Max inspired action flick it's about Clans and driving fast and taking on the Authority's head on Judy story is one of the underbelly of night City the clubs The Gangs the sex trade its gameplay scenarios are less about guns blazing and more about worming your way through the cracks in N City's uneven armor the entire voodo boys quest line is a deep dive into the net running fantasy jacking you into the net to come face to face with the powerful AIS that once imperal man's existence takamura's missions have a distinct film Noir bent you're meeting in diners the parade sitting that feels like it's pulled right from Blade Runner at one point you leave a meeting with takamura and chat for a while in the car only for that conversation to end leaving you both sitting in silence listening to a jazz track that would fit any hard booil detective [Music] story as much as each of these story arcs gesture towards futurist ideas and themes cyberpunk 2077 does very little with them we know arisaka is a big bad Corporation but why exactly is it bad we know the sex trait is exploitative but that exploitation feels rather similar to present day exploitation we're able to completely alter our physicality by way of cyber augmentation but V never really considers what that means in terms of her Humanity her longevity or her spirituality put it this way the edge Runner TV show is infinitely more thought-provoking in its 5-hour runtime than cyberpunk 2077 is in its 60 hours plus runtime we can put it another way I think everyone who played cyber Punk remembers the cineman quest line this is one of the rare moments where the game really explored themes of corporatism exploitation spirituality morality and Redemption there was a masterful quest line that stands Head and Shoulders over almost anything else in the game not only because it's excellent but also because the rest of cyberp punk never tries to reach for the same futurist introspection ironically enough that quest line is also one of the best examples of cyber Punk's biggest weaknesses the illusion of choice there is no way to avoid the climax of that quest line and it really feels like there should be just as it feels like there should be in scores of other quest lines or dialogue exchanges the whole life path thing was sort of the game's original sin promising a different experience through your playthrough based on the backstory you chose but in reality all this gave you was some second tier dialogue options that added a bit of flavor but had no bearing on actual decision- making options or outcomes there are precious few moments where you are able to make a real decision that will really impact events and that's a huge bummer because it's not only city project red failing to deliver on something they promised but it's also city project red failing to deliver on the promise of this setting a setting where so much is morally gray where the choice to do the right thing versus the choice to survive is an almost daily choice this is not a fairy tale with binary forces of Good and Evil that you'd easily choose between this is more complex more real and being robbed of the ability to make choices in night City leaves so much on the table luckily Phantom Liberty addresses that criticism headon but we'll talk more about that later similar to the way that events do not respond to your decision- making during dialogue exchanges the broader game does not respond to your gameplay decisions and as such there's very little reason to not go in all guns blazing all the time even before update 2.0 there were options to focus on quick hacking on stealth or on all out assault but there was never any price to be paid when being detected or when mowing down an entire Regiment of goons the resources you consume were infinite there was no morality meter silently tallying your body count and with the exception of a handful of quests there were no rewards for playing smartly rather than just brute forcing your way through the game is also extremely easy further negating the need for you to be more careful and considered in your approach you can stealth in cyberpunk absolutely and it works pretty well but there's basically no point and it is faster more efficient and just more fun to kill everything that moves moves and that's a bit of a bummer but I will say the combat man it's it's definitely fun and we'll talk more about it in the update 2.0 block but stuff like weapon handling and feedback the various quick hacks you can use the design of the weapon archetypes the combination of ranged and melee combat options it's fun man it really is again this is an action game city project red knew that and they made really awesome action combat that only got better with update 2.0 finally and I think most importantly we need to talk about night City I remember when I first reviewed cyber punk I commented that night city was remarkable and one of the most immersive video game spaces that I've ever been in that comment got a lot of push back people would say the cop system doesn't work and there's no mini gamess or you can't enter any of the buildings Etc the thrust of the response was that night city looked really good but its beauty was skin deep and no City with so little to do could be considered truly immersive I really disagree with that I think there are so many ways to be immersed in something I mean I find Spider-Man hella immersive when I'm just swinging through New York City I find find Diablo 4 immersive with its art design music and enemy design delivering one of the best fantasy worlds this year and yeah I also find like a dragon isan's quo immersive for all the reasons that people have come to expect from an rgg game point is there are so many ways that a video game can immerse you and visual presentation soundscape scale technical details all of these things can be brought to bear to get the job done and all of these things are turned up to 11 in night City maybe it's just my Neanderthal brain but booting up this game hopping in a car and driving is just the closest thing I've ever felt to putting on a VR headset without having to put on a VR headset I could just drive these streets for hours taking in every last detail and when I want to stop and get out and knock over a little bit of MK work all of that happens totally seamlessly no loading screens unlike other recent AAA releases this seamless world of breathtaking art design unmatched detail and Peerless technical Excellence this is a really special location it's one of a kind and night city is just as much a main character as is Judy krie Johnny or V herself but also let's not sell the interactivity of night City short either there's police shootouts and gang scuffles and there's cyber psychos to hunt down there are gigs on offer with the local fixer there's multi-stage side missions there's street racing and boxing and so much more the criticism that there's nothing to do in night city has always sounded so Hollow to me night City isn't exactly teaming with life or things to do but there's more than enough to spend 60 80 or 100 hours here driving the streets waiting for your phone to ring with the next opportunity so having experienced all of this again did my perspective on any of it change it did actually it became clearer why I loved cyber punk as much as I do part of that comes from being able to experience it again with a more critical eye ready for what's coming there's a lot more head room for you to observe your own reactions to something when you experience it for the second time secondly the fact that this is now bug-free and technically polished made it easier to focus on what was happening rather than what should have been happening playing through cyber Punk that first time a good portion of your head space was taken up trying to ignore all of the bugs getting in your way that's all gone now and as such each set piece or scene is there to be enjoyed without compromise thirdly and I think most importantly this playthrough really helped me zero in on the fact that the things I loved about cyberp Punk they were never really that broken to begin with I think its set pieces and scenarios are mely crafted some of the best you'll find in any action game I think its character are wonderfully written deeply relatable and so well realized through both the technical details and the way the voice actors bring these characters to life and I think night city is remarkable one of the most iconic spaces in any video game all of the bugs missing features Hollow RPG and busted game design stuff could have made this game a much better game than it ended up being of course but the things that were there were more than enough for me yeah cyber Punk doesn't say much and I wish it did it also doesn't let me say much through my actions and decisions and I wish it did but I've long made peace with the fact that cyber Punk is first and foremost an action game I know that wasn't what was promised but that's what it is and having made peace with that long ago I've been able to accept it on those terms and view it through that lens for that reason update 2.0 and Phantom Liberty are really great but they actually don't make me love this game any more than I already did because the core of cyberpunk 2077 remains unchanged and I think it's always been brilliant [Music] [Applause] [Music] suspect vehicle has been located update 2.0 is the last major patch for cyber Punk it is the last swing that CD project red will take at redesigning and rebalancing core gameplay systems or adding entirely new systems to bring the game closer to what was initially promised it's being loaded as a transformative success and I don't want to be koi I agree with a lot of that but I also think the patch 2.0 showcases just how how intractable some of cyber Punk's core issues are while adding some new issues along the way so let's talk about some of the smaller changes and improvements first we've spoken already about traffic and NPC intelligence it's a small thing but to be honest it makes a big difference you spent a lot of time driving and walking around night City and it definitely adds to the immersion when you see cars and people acting like you know real cars and people as opposed to just stopped in the middle of the road or walking into each other driving around is also more pleasant there's been a complete overhaul of vehicle handling for almost every car they're much more responsive now with better physics though top end performing cars can still feel really floaty and slidy the best driving experiences you can have in cyberpunk are actually with the slower cars that's when you can pull off things like handbrake turns and whatever else but regardless it's an overall much better Driving Experience no matter which car you're in oh and they also fixed that mini map issue too remember how at launch the mini map was really zoomed in and so when you were driving fast you couldn't see turns coming up well they fixed that a while ago and yeah it actually makes a really big difference speaking of cars the overall car economy has been rebalanced one of the most frustrating things about my first playthrough was seeing all of these sick looking cars that I wanted to buy but I just didn't have enough money to do so I think I could afford like one car after a nearly 100% playthrough very different here credits flow more readily cars are cheaper there are new ways to earn them and Phantom Liberty actually adds a repeatable mission type that makes it even easier to afford cars you still have to work for them they don't come free but there's a very clear very reasonable path to filling out a nice garage the biggest change to cars though is the addition of fully fledged car combat to be clear there was actually car combat in the base game but only in prescripted scenarios now you can whip out your gun at any point and start shooting at [ __ ] while you're driving and in fact some cars come built in with machine guns or even rocket launchers there are also dedicated repeatable missions that will put you into car combat scenarios and there's even Dynamic car combat events where rival gangs will go at it and you can join the freight if you choose car combat is a really good example of what some of the headline update date 2.0 changes achieve which is a meaningful expansion of the game's core systems but delivered just a little bit too late it is really great that this system now exists but unless you do a lot of those repeatable car side missions you really won't get to do much car combat if this system had existed from the start you can imagine that city project red would have been able to more deeply integrate it into the overall mission structure or the reward economy or whatever it could have been a really core part of cyberp punk arriving here in Phantom Liberty it's a really auxiliary system that the rest of the game can't properly capitalize upon I think the true value of it will be realized in cyberpunk 2 it's very similar to the police system cyber Punk's police at launch were one of the most heavily criticized aspects of the game giving up the chase after just a few seconds or teleporting in behind you since there was no underlying Tech to have them Drive in from offscreen it was capital B bad and city project red improved it a while ago and they've improved it again here now there's the classic five-star wanted system and if you [ __ ] around enough you are going to find out who Max Tac is who will rock up and clean your clock pretty quickly so this is cool right but some 60 hours in I only ever got that fstar Max tack rating when I stood my ground purposefully murdering as many cops and civilians as I could hell I couldn't even get past two stars just playing normally this system exists but there aren't many missions or scenarios where cops make their presence felt again it is a great system that simply couldn't be integrated into the base game and as such you really don't feel the benefit of this unless you go around looking for trouble much like car combat I expect the real benefits of this will be realized in cyber Punk 2 a less complicated W exists in the form of the perk tree redesign now if you played cyber Punk before you would recall that these perk trees were [ __ ] terrible they were a mix of too many options most of the options making no difference the whole like increase X shitty stat by X shitty percent thing that is the Hallmark of any terribly designed perk tree hell they had an entire tree devoted to crafting which didn't do anything because the entire crafting economy was fuba and I know because I put all my points into the crafting tree still can't believe how bad that was things have been totally reworked here entire trees ripped out perks deleted or redesigned is a top to bottom overhaul that now allows you to create a build that can synergize with your weapon your cyberwar and your play style choices I mean it did that before don't get me wrong but it was such a mess this is so much cleaner with each choice opening up new improved ways to play but it is still pretty messy there's still a lot of options here and it feels like you still don't need quite so many by the end you're kind of just dumping points here or there because you've got an excess over and above what your build actually needs there's no tension inherent in this system you you just get everything you want and then some and I think it would have been possible to prune this back even further and really ask the player to make some very considered decisions about their build one of the byproducts of having all of these really powerful perk nodes and being able to fill them all up really easily is that your character manages to get really strong really fast playing on normal difficulty I would say the overall difficulty framework breaks down at around about the 20-ish hour mark at that point I could just melt almost anything from entire squads of hired goons to actual bosses the changes to cyberwar perk trees and weapons are all great but you will very quickly stumble into builds that are basically god mode and even though enemy AI has been improved here it's just not enough to keep things feeling well balanced or challenging and that's the thing right as awesome as patch 2.0 is there's only so much that one patch can do yeah I can now deflect bullets with a katana and un sheath it while I ride on a motorcycle feeling like a total [ __ ] badass but there still isn't a single boss in this video game worth fighting because city project red have not figured out how to design boss encounters that work in this setting there's new tools and perks that make it easier to be stealthy without any incentive to be stealthy there's a bunch of perks that buff car combat efficiency and options but precious few missions in which to utilize them there's also a huge amount of residual clutter in here as well like certain armor pieces that still have armor on them While others don't and the crafting system is still basically useless the weapon mod system is equally redundant to list goes on so this is probably one of the more critical takes that you've heard about update 2.0 and I want to be really clear that this isn't me saying update 2.0 sucks rather what I'm saying is that update 2.0 is really good but we can't treat it as this Silver Bullet that fixes everything wrong with cyberpunk update 2.0 still exists within the overall framework of a game that can't handle things like character building and crafting and combat difficulty balancing and that at this point in its update cycle doesn't have room for things like more car combat missions or integrating the police in a more meaningful way still all of those issues aside we can't sell short thought what update 2.0 does achieve and I think its biggest success is the way it delivers a more fully realized cyberpunk fantasy you can mul people with your mantis blades in all new ways you can be a more lethal Netrunner than ever before you can blow up other cars with your mounted missiles while driving on a high-speed chase through the streets of night City you can cut so loose that Max Tac themselves have to rock up to bring you down these new features may not be fully balanced or integrated into the base game but they're there now and I think they not only provide plenty of thrill for anyone who chooses to play cyberpunk 2077 today but I think they provide a very tantalizing Taste of what's likely to come in the sequel I know who you are know your situation your problem and I can save your life [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] it's time we paid our friend in distress of initially there were at least two cyberpunk dlc's planned similar to what city project red did with the Witcher 3 hell there was a standalone spin-off multiplayer mode planned as well remember that one we all dreamed of something like GTA 5 multiplayer but that obviously Hit The Cutting Room floor the minute All the Troubles began those additional DLCs were also cut and city project red announced that they would be shipping only one major DLC expansion before moving on to the sequel given that Phantom Liberty is the last and only piece of expansion content we're going to get for cyberpunk 2077 it's a damn good thing it's [ __ ] awesome Phantom Liberty kicks off about halfway through the main game after a quest line involving the voodoo boys you get a phone call summoning you to the gates of Dogtown a new region near Pacifica and once you're there the current of events sweeps you away it's possible to boot up an old save file and jump straight into this it's also possible to jump straight to the expansion on an entirely new save file as city project red have an option that will let you level up automatically completing a bunch of the main game and it'll get you straight into dog town I really couldn't imagine a much worse way to experience this expansion for real experiencing a bug-free version of the base game seeing everything update 2.0 had to offer getting reacquainted with the major characters of night city that was more enjoyable for me than Phantom Liberty was and I loved Phantom Liberty honestly if you don't take the time to restart a playthrough I think you're missing out on a lot regardless of when you choose to play it Dogtown is waiting for you a woff portion of the city not controlled by the government or the corporations that run the rest of KN City this little fom is lorded over by one Kurt Hansen an ex-government operative who turned his back on his Nation after he felt it turned its back on him he set down Roots here overseeing a paramilitary organization that is armed to the teeth financed by arm sales and other elicit trades and playing host to the wealthy and Powerful of Knight City all of whom turn a blind eye to his flaunted independence because Hansen keeps the right Palms crossed with Silvera but Hansen may have finally overextended in his reach someone has shot down Air Force One with the president in it it's Crash landed in Dogtown and with the help of a new voice in your head called Songbird V has to resc the president find out who shot down the plane and figure out what the hell to do about it dog town is pretty remarkable I think it's one of the perfect examples of the way that square mileage is often the wrong thing to be aiming for when it comes to World design dog town is small you can circumnavigate it in just a minute or two but it is dense and it's vertical and it's filled with secrets and it is stunningly beautiful in its own ruined way the art here is somehow a step up versus night City I didn't think such a thing would be possible but somehow city project red have managed to top themselves with a space so detailed so distinctive and so peppered with so many iconic locations that this tiny slice of night City manages to feel like a city within a city from the moment you step out into that black market you would just mouth a gape like how the [ __ ] did they pull this off and this is just one tiny slice of dog Town mind you that you probably won't even return to after you leave it I can't imagine the amount of work that would have gone into creating just this space alone and there are at least a dozen more like it each of them capable of stopping you in your track tracks every time you see them from a technology perspective it's interesting to note the way that graphical technology influences art design cyberpunk 20177 was developed at a time when ratra Reflections were at The Cutting Edge of lighting technology and audiences just couldn't get enough of them that's one of the many reasons you'll see so much reflective glass and chrome throughout night City fast forward 3 years and path tracing provides better ambient feel that's why you see fewer reflective surfaces and more neon signage gently warming nearby scenery or volum metric fog soaking up all the disperate light sources around it there's no question that dogt was built different lit different and that its art Direction was directly affected by the ways that scenes could be lit Beyond its Aesthetics dog Town offers a surprising amount to see and do there's the main quest line of course but very often that quest line will ask you to cool your heels for a few days subtly encouraging you to see what else Dogtown has to offer maybe you want to go and see the local fixer Mr Hans who has a string of jobs for you that culminate in a quest land which will determine who runs Dogtown maybe you want to do one of the other side missions like the one where a brain Dance artist gets their brain fried and he thinks he's actually one of the brain dance influencers that he worships and you need to convince that influencer to help him out even though she clearly has no interest in helping out her fellow man there are those car missions I mentioned earlier they involve delivering a car to a certain location either in a set time frame or despite the best efforts of local gangs trying to stop you there are also airdrop missions since Dogtown is landlocked and relies on supplies being bombed in from overhead you can claim those drops for yourself but only after you take out or avoid the guards watching over them and the rewards are actually pretty worthwhile if you're at a point in your plays where where XP and Eddie still matter still the main thing you're going to do in dog town is the Phantom Liberty quest line consistent with that approach in the base game where each story AR has its own sort of theme or genre this one has one too and it's all new it's a political spy Thriller you're actually a secret agent here conscripted into the president's service to play a win or die Spy game until you win or die the president is a rather fleeting presence actually but the void she leaves is quickly filled by Solomon Reed played by Idis Ela and can I say Adis Ela does for me what keano Reeves was never able to quite do I love keano don't get me wrong but I never thought he was quite right as Johnny silver hand I don't think there's enough Darkness or rage in him to really sell that role Idis Elber on the other hand is absolutely poured into the role of Solomon Reed full of poise and presence and purpose and power every scene he is he is so dominant Flawless in every line and brought to life remarkably well by city project Red's Technical and artistic team who managed to capture elbow's likeness with staggering precision and detail not for nothing but they also updated keano ree's face as Johnny silveran and it's a pretty noticeable glow up the Phantom Liberty campaign is not at all what you'd expect I mean yeah there's a James Bond inspired party scene complete with verbal jousting over a game of roulette but as you get deeper in it becomes so much more interesting and exciting and unique remember how I said that the base game really struggled to use its futurist setting to full effect well Phantom Liberty absolutely uses the Cyber Punk setting to full effect it's not thought-provoking per se but it is [ __ ] cool putting a futurist spin on classic Spy game tropes and dropping you into scenarios that will absolutely have you on the edge of your seat praying that you make every shot count or that you say the right thing at the right time that's the other thing that Phantom Liberty directly addresses the criticism that cyber Punk is a game that offers the illusion of choice only Phantom Liberty absolutely offers real choices it's in the side quest some of which can be completed in different ways and with different outcomes and it's definitely in the main quest line hell you can basically nope out of this whole thing really early on by just choosing to do so and that's a decision that the game will recognize and respect you will be faced with pivotal decisions that change the way events play out in a big way and if you play your cards right or wrong depending on how you see it you will unlock a brand new ending for the base game one that is absolutely worth seeing for those who are have already finished the game before from setting to set pieces to narrative and decision-making Phantom Liberty is a two of force it is cyber Punk at its absolute best except in one crucial aspect and that's in the personal connection that you might feel with the major characters these are spies that we're dealing with here they are emotionally distant and inherently untrustworthy even when they're trying to connect with v on an emotional level you can never really trust it because you don't know if what they're saying is real or if they're just saying it to to manipulate you there's also the fact that you spend less time with these characters than you will those in the rest of the game which limits your ability to grow closer to them through prolonged exposure for this reason I think Phantom Liberty is the best cyber Punk has to offer but it's actually not my favorite part I really think the base game nailed that balance between high stakes heists and low stakes Hangouts put another way maybe the real cyber Punk was the friends we made along the way okay let's just bring this home so what's to go the pr so that's the end of cyberp punk 2077 at least this game there's no more DLC no more major patches the game is finished and so at the end of this road we can finally ask what will the legacy of cyberpunk 2077 be well opinions will vary on the game itself but I think we can all agree that a central part of its Legacy is sure to be that of the cautionary tail against the risks of hype the dangers of crunch culture and what it means for a studio to bite off well and truly more than they can chew I think about that a lot when I think about cyberpunk 2 not only for the whole once bit and twice shy thing but because city project red have confirmed that the sequel will not be made in Poland it'll be made by a new studio that they're setting up in Boston they're also abandoning the red engine that they've used for years choosing instead to move to Unreal Engine 5 so that's a new country a new studio a new team and a new game engine and all that stuff need needs to be stood up while also making cyber Punk 2 at a time when city project red are making the transition to a company developing multiple major projects at once one of the interesting lessons of 2023 has been the power of existing teams using existing tools Resident Evil 4 remake tear of the Kingdom Boulders Gate 3 Street Fighter 6 some of the best games of the year all of them leveraging a lot of Prior work experience tool sets and expertise I look at just how much change CD project red is about to go through as it commences development of cyberpunk 2 and I'm definitely going to be very interested to see how they navigate all of that I think we should keep a lot of that top of Mind as we begin the process of imagining what cyber Punk 2 will one day be like but that is just one part of cyber Punk's Legacy the other one is that of the Redemption art component which I know sits very uncomfortably for some for many it doesn't matter how good no man's sky is today what matters is that Shawn Murray lied about it back then and there's just no coming back from that I get it I do but I'm also self-aware enough to know that that's just not how I'm wired the fact is CD project red did put in the work to fix cyberpunk and expand it and they continue to do so without a cash shop or whatever and given that this DLC will run you for upwards of 20 hours plus if you do everything on offer it's a very reasonable asking price I get why someone would find the idea of a Redemption Arc odious but personally I'm glad that city project red stuck with this and got it to this point because now I think it's in a shape where more people can see what many of us so long ago and that brings me back to the thesis I offered at the top of this review cyber Punk was always good big parts of it were broken but on the whole it was really really good and I know not everyone agrees with that idea even today that line gets characterized as revisionist history or you know excusing city project Reds [ __ ] sweeping the problems under the rug Etc but playing through it again just as I have it became even more clear to me that the things I always loved about cyber Punk its story its characters its world its scenarios its fantasies its factions its City those were there all along and they were so good that they helped me see past all of the glaring issues and broken promises for that reason update 2.0 and Phantom Liberty didn't hit for me quite like they did for others I think if you were someone who wanted better BuildCraft or a better police system or car combat then sure these updates and new content might be the thing that turned you from being somewhat ambivalent towards cyber Punk into someone who really loves it but I don't think they will I think if you're going to love this game it's not going to be because of the improved cyberware system or the new perk trees or even the impressive cast of characters and plot twist of phantom Liberty I think it's going to be because of Jackie and Judy and the cinman and the thrill of firing your first smart sniper rifle and the first time you cross the black wall or that music that plays during the Johnny flashbacks and the reload animations of his hand Cannon or the AE that washes over you as you turn a corner radio blaring and the darker neon lit silhouette of night City stretches out before you I think that's why many of us love cyber Punk all along and as great as all this new stuff is you can't fix what wasn't broken all right so cyber Punk rules Phantom Liberty rules Idris elow rules you know what else rules all the nextg GPU technology brought to you by this video sponsors envidia and orus their RTX GPU Hardware makes night City the single best looking location in any video game full stop and I know this because I was able to test it with a custombuilt cyber Punk themed PC to let me crank this game to its absolute Max settings so first of all this rig was actually built by a local Aussie PC Builder and YouTuber he goes by simple mods he's one of the best in Australia he does incredible work he's actually posted the build video for this PC on his channel I've left a link to it below I'd love it if you guys could give it a click and show him some love because he definitely deserves it the heart of the rig he's built is this thing a gigabyte orus GeForce RTX 490 gaming 0 the 4090 is the single best consumer level GPU that money can buy providing more raw processing power than any other consumer GPU on the market if it is raw graphical processing that you're after then nothing comes close to the 4090 nvidia's RTX gpus aren't just about raw horsepower though what really sets them apart is the unique AI driven technology that puts this Hardware to work in entirely new ways making your games look better and run better than they could do on any other Hardware take R tracing for example you probably know about R tracing at this point it's a of recreating light so that it reflects and fills more realistically cyberpunk 2077 was always the best showcase for R Racing but a little while ago Nvidia worked with C project red to add a new R tracing mode to cyberpunk called overdrive now without getting too much into the technicals overdrive utilizes what's called Full Ray tracing or path tracing previous versions of R tracing simulated light from a number of Select sources but full Ray tracing simulates light from all sources in a scene it is the most accurate simulation of light we have ever seen in video games and its results are truly transformative the thing is though path tracing is very GPU intensive hogging a lot of your gpu's total processing power this is where dlss comes in you've probably heard about dlss as well to this point it is the Undisputed best form of upscaling rendering your game at a lower resolution and then using AI to rebuild the image so that it retains the same Fidelity as higher resolutions this provides a massive performance uplift giving you the head room to enable more demanding options like R tracing but it doesn't stop there though last year Nvidia pushed out DS S3 which uses AI to interlace additional frames between those which are being natively rendered depending on the game this Tech allows you to more than double your frame rate while Nvidia reflex ensures that input latency is kept to an absolute minimum but Nvidia had one final Ace up their sleeve and it arrived at the same time as cyberp Punk's 2.0 update it's called DSS 3.5 and it takes the already incredible results of dlss and makes them even better again not not to get too technical but dlss 3.5 uses five times the amount of data to train the AI producing significantly better image quality for any game utilizing dlss while also providing an additional performance uplift so just to put all of this in perspective on this rig I was able to run cyber Punk at 4K absolute Max settings rate tracing overdrive mode enabled and I was getting at least 100 FPS all the time that is absurd getting any game that looks this good running at 4K 100 FP s is nuts but when you think about how much R tracing is going on here that FPS result is just straight up crazy I'm excited to keep playing around with this Tech and testing it in future games on my shiny new rig again a big thank you to simple mods for putting it together he did an amazing job if you want to see how he did it then the link to his build video is below and if you want to learn more about how nvidia's next generation of gpus and AI enabled technology will transform the way you play click the link to the info page below thanks to Nvidia and aorus for sponsoring the video and thank you for watching it [Music]

Channel: Skill Up

Views: 693,371

Keywords: skill up, skill, up, gameplay, games, guide, cyberpunk 2077, cyberpunk, cyberpunk 2077 review, cyberpunk 2066 impressions, cyberpunk 2077 gameplay, cyberpunk 2077 trailer, cyberpunk 2077 music, cyberpunk gameplay, cyberpunk trailer, cyberpunk PC, review, impressions, cyberpunk 2077 phantom liberty, phantom liberty review, cyberpunk 4k gameplay, 4k, cyberpunk 2.0, cyberpunk 2077 phantom liberty review, cyberpunk 2077 update 2.0, phantom liberty cutscenes, endings, cutscenes, cdpr, PC

Id: QNKS3vkGAag

Length: 52min 16sec (3136 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 30 2023