Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (DLC)

Phantom Liberty is a paid expansion for Cyberpunk 2077 that drops you into Dogtown, a walled-off, militarized district ruled by a warlord while the rest of Night City pretends it doesn't exist. The premise is a proper spy thriller: you're pulled into a presidential rescue mission gone sideways, working alongside a new cast that includes Solomon Reed, a deep-cover FIA agent played with exhausted conviction. If you bounced off the base game's early hours, this is a different flavor. The pacing is tighter, the stakes feel more grounded, and the writing earns its twists rather than telegraphing them from three quests away. The expansion introduces a reworked skill tree system that applies retroactively to the base game, which is either a gift or a headache depending on how attached you were to your existing build. The new trees organize V's capabilities around four archetypes - Body, Reflexes, Technical Ability, and Cool - and the rework adds genuine build variety at mid-to-late levels. A stealth netrunner and a shotgun-first Gorilla Arms brawler now feel mechanically distinct well past the point where most RPG builds converge into the same optimal slurry. Dogtown itself adds new gigs, weapon stashes, and NCPD scanner hustles, though a handful of the side content is the familiar filler the base game was sometimes guilty of. The main questline, however, is dense and branching in ways that reward a second run. The new weapons and cyberware fit the espionage theme without feeling out of place in Night City's broader aesthetic. You get new iconic weapons tied to story characters, and Dogtown's black market opens up cyberware options that aren't available elsewhere. The area design is more vertical and maze-like than the open corridors of Watson or Pacifica, which suits both the power-fantasy build of running rooftop to rooftop and the grounded stealth approach. Boss encounters are more considered than the base game's occasional difficulty spikes, though they still won't satisfy players who want true Souls-level mechanical rigor. What makes Phantom Liberty worth your attention is the question it sits with: who do you owe loyalty to when everyone asking for it has blood on their hands? The choices you make affect not just Dogtown's fate but feed back into the base game's ending options, adding a new conclusion that the original release didn't have. Whether that ending lands for you will depend on your tolerance for ambiguous resolutions, but it is at least a resolution that feels earned rather than stapled on. The voice performances, especially from Idris Elba as Reed and Alejandro Edda reprising Rogue, carry scenes that could easily have felt like filler. If you're an RPG player who values narrative payoff and wants an expansion that treats side characters as actual characters rather than quest dispensers, Phantom Liberty delivers that. If you're hoping for a massive map expansion or an entirely new game loop, manage expectations: this is a focused story chapter with systemic additions, not a reinvention. The reworked progression alone is arguably worth playing even before you factor in Dogtown, and the main storyline is among the better spy-thriller writing you'll find in an open-world RPG released in this era. Monika, Scout Team