Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty

Patch 2.0 has ruined what for me was a good game. The changes seem from pointless to ridiculous. Why the tier levels on clothing? What's the point of collecting Iconic weapons if you can't upgrade them because there are no mats available? Cyber mods are contradictory putting player into a forced choice between mods and weapons that is not complimentary. Etc, etc, etc.

Great new district, items, and interesting story add-on. However, the scripted combats favour specific builds and are almost impossible if you made some choices with a build that is not focused on maximizing DPS, or if you start some sequences too early in the game. This is exacerbated with the mandatory, silly scaling that has been introduced since 2.0. The scripting nature of these sequences is very hard to ignore, too. Fortunately, there aren't too many of them. I liked the story and the choice that could be made, but the endings are all depressing. By the way, it's very confusing to see the credits of the DLC start rolling even though the game isn't actually finished. The extra ending that really finishes the game is even worse - just avoid it if you plan another playthrough. It drags on and on just to show how negative the outcome really is, and it's just pointless. The DLC is still worth it for the extra content if you're a big fan of the base game and can't get enough of it. One of the additions is the new car theft missions, which allows to get new vehicles. Those vehicles are nice to have, but the missions are annoying to do because of the silly (and broken) car combat. More often than not, it will also turn the customs to open fire on you when you try to exit Dogtown, so you'll have to reload the game and try again. I advise to wait for a discount and for enough patches to fix all the problems (as always, many new bugs have been added on top of all the unsolved ones in 1.x).

The introduction to this expansion is a very poor choice of linear, scripted action movie which goes on for over an hour before you get control (i.e. fast travel) back. The main story of PL is.. okay I guess. Idris could have been replaced with a nobody and it wouldn't have changed anything, he's nowhere near Johnny's impact or charisma. None of the characters really made much of any impact on me. The best part is the side quests and gigs, which are of the same superb quality as the main game's. Patch 2.0 and 2.1, which came with the launch of PL, made the game noticeably worse in my humble opinion. My third and next playthrough will be with the final 1.6.x build again.

- The story itself is meh. Full of macguffins and dialogue that are only there to force the story. Rather than a story that flows naturally from the setting and characters that feel like they live that setting. - The dlc is filled with action set pieces better suited to a CoD game. - I never found dialogue options that reflected what I wanted to say. - Many, many situations that an experienced Merc like V should never find themselves in. - NPCs and story beats that seem to only be there to make V (and the player) look incompetent. All of this stands in stark contrast to the base game. The above bullet points are almost a full 180 from the base game. Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 is a great game. After the two excellent dlc's for Witcher 3 and CDPR managing to really redeem the game from launch I expected something so much better.

Graphically fine. But: You are pushed along the rail to follow. Wanna do it your way? Nope. Only one way through. The only alternate paths are like 10 meters another way round to the same destination. If you "Fight instead of expected run" and an endless stream of out-of-nowhere enemies arise, until your reach the destination. And the big robot fight is full of quick time events, do as you are told, or die. Not finished yet, but the best part up to now was where you help a little robot to regain its memory, right at the beginning. So only one funny side quest so far. I would have loved to end the VIPs life right upon first meet instead of fighting along with her, her own fault for landing where she should not, but you are not given the choice. This does not live up to the rest of the game, sadly. I hope the next DLC offers more and will not be THIS linear.