Video Game review- Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty
PHANTOM LIBERTY is an expansion for Cyberpunk 2077, a game that has a mixed reputation for the fact that it had fantastic world-building but had a truly epic disaster of a launch. The past three years have resulted in the game becoming "mostly" bug free and a scaled down version being able to work on last generation consoles. Phantom Liberty is only able to run on current generation consoles, though, which is something that may strike those who bought the game for earlier generations as unfair.
The Phantom Liberty expansion comes hot on the heels of the 2.0 Update that changes a massive amount of gameplay for Cyberpunk 2077. As such, it is very hard to differentiate the two and there's not really much point to doing so. Suffice to say, I'm very positive about the changes for 2.0 as they tweaked the difficulty, added more features, and also overhauled both the crafting, police, as well as crafting system. The game isn't so different that veteran players won't fall back into a comfortable routine, though. It also doesn't change enough that it's a completely different experience. A lot of fans might benefit from starting over and playing the game anew, though, but I don't see any issue with resuming the game from where you started.
The premise for Phantom Liberty is V, protagonist of the game, is recruited by a mysterious woman named Songbird to rescue the President of the New United States (NUSA), Rosalind Myers. This is a blatant homage to Escape from New York but only plays a small role in the expansion. The big change to the game is that it introduces Dogtown, a massive walled off portion of Night City ruled by a warlord named Kurt Hansen. It is a city of criminals and makes the rest of Night City look like suburbia.
The main quest has a heavy spy feel as you are recruited by Solomon Reed (Idris Elba) to smuggle the President to safety and then a variety of other missions that take you through the dirty slums of Dogtown to a number of sparkling Casino Royale-esque casino scenes. We also finally get the space shuttle launching platform that had been long seen in the background of Night City but hadn't previously been visitable.
The side quests are much better than the main game with a lot of tie-ins to previous quests. You can call Panam, Judy, Vic, and River for help through a lot of these quests. Mr. Hands, who was only a minor Fixer in the main game, gives you an additional ten quests that often have multiple endings as well as choices to make throughout the story. Maybe you should help a boxer break free from the Animals gang or perhaps you think he should take a dive because heroes stands rarely prosper in Night City.
There's also some fun radiant quests that will be infinitely generated like going after plane dropped supplies and stealing cars for El Capitan. Both are recommended for characters who have already done most of the Cyberpunk 2099 content as things like progression shards are now a thing that enemies drop. A previously overleveled 50th level character with cutting edge Cyberware will now find himself needing a lot more edge with the additional 10 levels that are available to get. Plus, as the enemies scale now, you will find yourself a lot less powerful.
In conclusion, Phantom Liberty is well worth the thirty dollars that you might spend on it. It's not as good as Blood and Wine but it's a very good bunch of Cyberpunk 2077 content. Indeed, arguably better than the main game in a lot of ways. However, it could have been bigger. This feels closer to Hearts of Stone than Blood and Wine. A new ending is added to the game if you take a specific set of actions during the game but the jury is out whether you'll find it as a satisfying alternative to the pre-existing ones.
