I got sucked in to Cyberpunk 2077's dark, depressing world

What I had assumed was a sci-fi sandbox of gang shootings and carjackings was actually an emotionally devastating tragedy about a horrifying new way to die. And the Phantom Liberty DLC felt like a killer spy movie video game adaptation.

Act 1 (8 missions) of this game had me thinking it was just a GTA gangster story. And it did a pretty decent job of that, but I really like what this game grew into better.

Act 2 (17 missions) transitions the game to being about V’s “condition”, and introduces your terrorist brain pal Johnny Silverhand. This hoenstly feels like the “real” game to me, and makes me wish Act 1 was compressed even a little bit. You can actually choose to skip it, presumably so that you can make a new character who’s instantly ready to take on the amazing Phantom Liberty DLC.

I pretty rapidly acquired the quest to start Act 3 (4 missions in my route). I guess I was kinda bouncing from main mission to main mission for most of the game. At that point I had a massive backlog of side quests, so I started doing some of them, since starting Act 3 locks you in to main missions until you hit credits.

I’m generally of the opinion that most “open world” games are too big and have way too many time wasting quests, and this game is no exception. I had a hard time figuring out which quests would actually be a good use of my time, as sometimes even the “gig” missions were hilarious and memorable, but then the big name side missions wouldn’t interest me.

The crucifixion BD quest was… truly fucked up. Which is definitely something I can say about a number of things in this game. It definitely tries to be gross and push the envelope… but it’s generally done in a way that feels like good tone setting for how fucked up Nighty City is.

It’s worth mentioning that I didn’t quite understand the importance of cyberware, or how armor worked, until quite a ways into the game. But once I did, it kind of became trivially easy on Normal… though I didn’t mind enough to increase the difficulty.

I went with a Sandevistan Katana Reflex build, so I was reflecting bullets, air dashing, and slowing time as I sliced enemies to ribbons. It was… incredibly effective after I got a little bit of investment into it.

I found the shooting to be decently fun in the game, but I spent most of my time slicing.

Driving was… not fun. I didn’t like how any of the vehicles felt, and dodging traffic got old fast. It was also a bit irritating that fast travel not only required you to end up at specific waypoints, but you had to start from those specific waypoints too. So you’d have to add map markers constantly in order to fast travel, and summon your car to drive to the nearest one. Getting around the city was just annoying enough that I didn’t bother collecting all of the tarot cards (which were super cool), or even unlocking all the quests (you have to drive near where each quest starts to add it to your journal).

I don’t want to put a ton of spoilers in this review, so I’ll speak a bit more broadly about the story. I’d say the overall tone is sad. It’s a story about grappling with death. While some side quests have happy endings, Night City is a very bad place where very bad things happen. And V’s life story is an extremely interesting tragedy.

Keanu Reeves’s performance as Johnny Silverhand was super fun, though I’m a big Keanu fan… so take that with a grain of salt.

When it comes to the writing, I actually think Phantom Liberty (the 2023 DLC) was the best part. Heck, even the side quests are better, and Dogtown is more dense with interesting things to do.

The Phantom Liberty story is a spy thriller about the NUSA president, sleeper agents (including Idris Elba as Solomon Reed), and an elite hacker who’s dying. There’s a lot of twists and turns, and I really liked the moral gray areas. You have to choose sides, and I felt conflicted! Ultimately I stand by my choice 100% (it turns out it’s the most popular option, but all four had decent representation).

There’s a strong cinematic quality to parts of this game, including a concert by Lizzy Wizzy (played by Grimes) that plays out during your undercover casino mission in the enemy’s base. The production values feel great in Phantom Liberty, and it made me remember how much I love spy shit.

Despite me expecting this game to be crude, gross, full of goofy side missions, centered around too much killing and car driving… When it gets to do its story bits, I really liked them. I actually shed some tears over both the ending I got to Phantom Liberty and the main campaign. So they certainly did something right here.