Few games have undergone as dramatic a turnaround as Cyberpunk 2077, and its expansion, Phantom Liberty, is the clearest proof yet of how far CD Projekt Red has come since launch.
A Spy Thriller Worthy of Night City
Set in the new district of Dogtown, Phantom Liberty drops V into a tense espionage plot involving the President of the New United States, a downed spy plane, and a shadowy fixer named Solomon Reed, voiced with real gravity by Idris Elba. The story is tighter and more focused than the base game’s sprawling narrative, with genuinely difficult moral choices and multiple endings that feel earned rather than arbitrary.
Systems That Finally Click
Alongside the expansion, CD Projekt Red overhauled the base game’s skill trees, police system, vehicle combat, and cyberware mechanics. Perks feel impactful, hacking and stealth builds are viable in ways they weren’t at launch, and Night City finally reacts to crime with something resembling logic. Dogtown itself is a dense, vertical playground packed with side content that rivals the main questline in quality.
Where It Stumbles
Phantom Liberty requires a fairly high character level to access, meaning newcomers can’t dive straight in, and some performance issues persist on last-gen hardware. A few side activities in Dogtown also recycle mission structures from the base game a little too closely.
Verdict
Phantom Liberty is the expansion Cyberpunk 2077 needed to justify its ambition. Combined with the 2.0 update’s overhaul, Night City is finally the game it was always meant to be.
Score: 9.2/10
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