Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty - A Second Chance at the Apocalypse

Night City has no mercy. That’s the first thing Phantom Liberty reestablishes—and does it without the cockiness of a game that has its life together. No, Phantom Liberty isn’t Cyberpunk 2077 in desperate need of a cherry-on-the-cake redemption arc. It is a makeshift reaffirmation of what this world was supposed to be in the first place: seductive and brutal, unsentimental, oozing with choice, and, more importantly, consequence.

The original game felt a bit like it was trying to be Blade Runner and, at the same time, tripping into Idiocracy with sword-shaped dildos lopped off as loot. Phantom Liberty adjusts the pendulum back. The world is no longer drenched in cheap irony, feeling far more grounded — and willing to punish you for getting it wrong. Not mechanically. Narratively.

Phantom Liberty is a jolt to the neural interface for an RPG player who’s been starved for morally complex, heavy decisions since the golden era of Obsidian and early BioWare. The spy-thriller premise serves a purpose more than as a set dressing. It contains some of the most ethically ambiguous scenarios CDPR has written to date, and it’s a precision-cut container.

Not Another DLC

The designers of Phantom Liberty know it is a DLC, and that’s their secret weapon. Embracing a presumed secondary status allows you to go for broke. In what feels like a more narratively tight and lean slice of Cyberpunk, this one has a clearer focus. More straight to the point. There are fewer tangents, gags, and collectable nonsense. Instead, there is depth.

Dogtown, the new zone, is a pressure cooker. You can feel it in the world design’s density: crushed architecture taken over by warlords, citizens—either too broken or so adept at surviving to show the cracks—dazed by all-consuming propaganda. It feels lived-in—not just dressed-up. Freeside from Fallout: New Vegas comes to mind, only with better lighting and worse secrets.

Every single encounter within Dogtown feels painstakingly crafted. Not in the overly authored sense—though it is in some places very tightly written—but in how choice hangs in the air. You’re bound to be remembered—more accurately, characters remember you. More to the point, you are forced to remember them because your choices are hardly “good” or “evil.” A lot of them tend to be desperate, self-serving, opportunistic, loyal, and vengeful. All of them are human. This is CD Projekt Red finally doing consequences right, not just promising them.

Branching Narratives That Actually Branch

Let us discuss the secret ending. No spoilers here, but allow me to guide you through Phantom Liberty’s final acts. This isn't about "+5 Street Cred" fake nonsense or mere flavor text alterations. We're talking about diverging story paths featuring real consequences—paths that will fundamentally reshape not only the DLC, but also the base game’s finale.

For all you role-playing game (RPG) enthusiasts, this is where the gold is. With Phantom Liberty, your sense of control is toyed with, making you think you have outsmarted the game--only to be reminded that being in control does not mean having power. Sometimes, it’s the freedom of picking who gets to burn and who gets to walk away limping. And the feeling is delightfully painful.

This is the level of disparity that Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings showcased, and if you know, you know it’s exceedingly rare to see such a thing.

Lore Without Lectures

As far as welcome changes go, Phantom Liberty integrates its lore in a much better manner. In contrast to Cyberpunk 2077, which at times felt like an overwhelming assault of lore was getting shoved into your brain, this expansion is far more elegant. The player is given the opportunity to listen to dialogue snippets, read graffiti, receive radio signals, or access encrypted files to tell them a story without having it force-fed to them.

There is no excess dependence on Johnny Silverhand's monologues, bless Keanu (he is anything but subtle). Instead, new figures like Solomon Reed, who is portrayed with tired gravitas by Idris Elba, carry the story in the way they hold themselves. They are rooted somewhere up top: the NUSA, Militech, and the hazy remains of Blackwall activities. But it never feels like a history exposition. It's not guidance; it's trailing a thread through a wire maze.

The Boundless World as an Attribute of its Morality

Is Phantom Liberty among the finest post-apocalyptic worlds we have ever seen? Your expectations of the apocalypse will determine the answer.

If you desire gleaming relics alongside Mad Max costumes, look elsewhere. If you want a world where the apocalypse has already taken place - silently and systematically through corporatization and digital colonization - then absolutely, yes. Phantom Liberty is alongside Deus Ex: Human Revolution, The Outer Worlds, or, at their most acerbic, Disco Elysium.

Rather than the devastated, bombed relics of the world in Fallout, we have something worse. While everything may seem in ruins, it is, in fact, a living hell.

Characters With Some Fleshing Out

There is a downside, however – some characters feel incomplete.

For example, Reed is a dynamic character, but Alex suffers in the other direction with pacing issues. He is engaging, given a handful of zesty traits, and then put aside. Not tossed out, no, but ignored. It is an absence that accentuates what is already great and makes them feel worse. There is a desire to empathize, but the text does not provide sufficient opportunity.

Writing excellent characters and forgetting to give them adequate screen time is the CDPR problem. This is especially true for the characters’ story arcs. Scaffolding dialogue is always required. Phantom Liberty reaches some of its greatest narrative moments due to conflict, not tenderness. That works well for the thrust of a spy-thriller narrative, but there can be a desire for gentler, more tender touches – especially when the decisions feel so impactful.

The Crash Of Emotions

Let me now define the absolute best moment.

There’s a brilliant scene – still spoiler-free – that depicts you walking away while someone is pleading desperately for you not to go. You leave anyway. You aren’t doing it for the sake of being cruel. You don’t lack empathy. You honestly believe it is the right thing to do. Then the screen fades black with silence as the credits roll. No iconic soundtrack cue. No triumphant chime for an earned XP.

Just silence.

It's earned. It's honest. It's brutal.

That's when I was sure Phantom Liberty wasn’t merely a good expansion. It was a reclamation of RPG storytelling as something that could hurt you, not just entertain you.

Final Thoughts: Finally Focused, But Flawed

Phantom Liberty doesn’t address every single one of Cyberpunk 2077’s core problems. There’s still some ludonarrative dissonance, the feeling that some of the sandbox mechanics are a bit lackluster, and yes, some strange loot is still dropped. (The dildos may be out of the game, but the remembrance holds.)

But the essence of the game—the part that matters to those of us who are narrative heavy, for whom meaningful choices still exist that don't need a scoreboard—gets to us and finally delivers.

This isn’t a polished version of Cyberpunk 2077 and is no longer a game for players who buy cheap PS4 games. It’s a version that shows that they understood Cyberpunk 2077 and the need to push it forward as requested by so many fans of this universe.