Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty

I went into Dogtown expecting a decent side story and came out three days later having completely renegotiated my feelings about Cyberpunk 2077 as a whole. That is not a sentence I expected to write. Phantom Liberty is CD Projekt Red's sole expansion for their sprawling open-world RPG, and it drops V into a walled-off militia district called Dogtown, a city-within-a-city ruled by warlord Kurt Hansen and his Barghest militia, where corporations and police are flatly refused entry. The setup is pure spy thriller: a presidential shuttle goes down over the worst real estate in Night City, and suddenly you are juggling loyalties between NUSA federal agent Solomon Reed (voiced with restrained intensity by Idris Elba), a slippery netrunner named Songbird, and the usual background noise of Johnny Silverhand complaining in your skull. The writing is tight and morally grey in exactly the way that makes CDPR's best work worth replaying. Choices branch in ways that feel consequential, not cosmetic, and the expansion adds four distinct endings to Phantom Liberty's story plus an entirely new ending branch for the base game itself. If choices mattering is your metric, this passes. The Relic skill tree is the headlining mechanical addition exclusive to Phantom Liberty, and it earns its place. Relic points are not handed out on a schedule; you hunt them down through story progress or by raiding restricted data terminals in Dogtown, which makes unlocking abilities like air-dashing, seeing through walls with Optical Camo, or triggering devastating melee cyberware finishers feel earned rather than gifted. Pair that with the free Update 2.0 overhaul that ships alongside the expansion, and the character-building system is genuinely unrecognizable from launch. Perks under attributes like Reflexes, Technical Ability, and Intelligence now unlock actual new capabilities rather than flat percentage bumps. Armor stats moved off clothing and onto cyberware, which finally means your V can look how you want without tanking your build. The level cap rises to 60, new weapons land in Dogtown's black market, from the Hercules flamethrower to the Carmen power assault rifle and the Rasetsu sniper, and vehicle combat arrives with missile launchers and mounted guns you can fire mid-chase. Dogtown itself is polarizing, and honestly, the criticisms are fair. It is a compact, vertically dense district that some reviewers found repetitive after a few hours, and a chunk of the missions push you back out into Coastview rather than keeping you in the new area. If you come in expecting the sprawling variety of Night City proper, you will feel the seams. The side gigs are also uneven, a familiar problem for CDPR open-world design. Some are atmospheric and character-driven; others are glorified fetch runs that exist to fill the map. The AI, while improved, still has moments where enemies single-file into your line of fire like they read a manual on how to die efficiently. These are not deal-breakers, but they keep Phantom Liberty from being the flawless redemption story some outlets declared it to be. What holds up completely, past hour 20 and into a second playthrough, is the cast. Reed and Songbird are among the best-written characters CDPR has produced, genuinely nuanced in their motivations and compelling enough that the question of who to trust becomes a real internal argument. The main quest missions are structured to alternate between stealth infiltration, identity-chip-based social roleplay, high-octane firefights, and quieter character moments. That variety of pacing is where Phantom Liberty most clearly outperforms its host game. This is a spy drama that understands scene-setting, and it mostly trusts the player to follow without hand-holding. New to Cyberpunk entirely, you can jump straight in at level 15 via a fresh-start option, which is a sensible on-ramp, though playing through the main game first gives the emotional beats significantly more weight.

Monika · Scout Team

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