Cyberpunk 2077 Review
After years of patches and the Phantom Liberty expansion, Cyberpunk 2077 has become the game it always promised to be.
It is hard to think of a bigger turnaround in modern gaming. Cyberpunk 2077 launched broken; today, after the 2.0 overhaul and the Phantom Liberty expansion, it is one of the most atmospheric RPGs you can play. This review covers the game as it stands now on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, with Update 2.0 and the expansion in place — a very different beast from the version that arrived in December 2020.
Night City, finally realised
The city was always the star, and now the systems live up to it. Vertical, neon-soaked and crammed with detail, Night City rewards the simple act of walking around. Built on Mike Pondsmith's tabletop Cyberpunk setting, it is a corporate city-state carved into distinct districts — the glass towers of City Center, the crowded markets of Watson, gang-run Pacifica, the industrial sprawl of Santo Domingo — with the sun-bleached Badlands waiting beyond the city limits.
What impresses most is density rather than size. Street vendors, ripperdoc clinics, billboards and radio chatter all push the same bleak, funny, excessive vision of 2077, and the city looks astonishing at night, when rain turns every street into a mirror. The police and enemy AI no longer break the fantasy, which means the city finally reacts when you misbehave in it.
A ghost in your head
You play V, a mercenary whose big score goes wrong and leaves them carrying a biochip that holds the digital ghost of rockstar-terrorist Johnny Silverhand, played by Keanu Reeves. Johnny is slowly overwriting V's mind, and the main story is a race against that clock with the Arasaka Corporation standing in the way.
The premise gives the writing a sharp, personal edge. Reeves' Johnny is abrasive, self-mythologising and occasionally moving, and the push-and-pull between him and V drives the best scenes in the game. The three life paths — Nomad, Street Kid and Corpo — change your prologue and colour your dialogue options rather than your stats, and the side jobs are where the writing is at its most human. Several of them rival the main plot.
Phantom Liberty raises the bar
The expansion is the best thing CD Projekt has written since the Witcher's Blood and Wine — a tense espionage story with branching loyalties and a standout performance from Idris Elba's character. It is proof the studio learned the right lessons.
Phantom Liberty drops V into Dogtown, a walled-off district run by the warlord Kurt Hansen, after the President of the New United States crash-lands inside it. Elba plays Solomon Reed, a sleeper agent of the Federal Intelligence Agency, and netrunner Songbird is the mystery at the centre of it all. The loyalties you choose shape how the story ends, and one path even unlocks a new ending for the base game. On the systems side, it adds a Relic skill tree, new weapons and vehicles, and raises the level cap to 60.
I, V, do solemnly swear that I shall faithfully serve the New United States of America. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty – coming in 2023. #Cyberpunk2077 #PhantomLiberty
— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) September 6, 2022
Builds that finally matter
Update 2.0, released days before the expansion, rebuilt the RPG underneath. The reworked perk trees finally let netrunner, gunslinger and blades builds feel genuinely distinct: a netrunner can wipe out a room through quickhacks without drawing a gun, while a blade build turns every fight into a close-quarters dash. Cyberware installed by ripperdocs shapes how V moves and fights, and sprinting, sliding and double-jumping give gunfights a fluid, aggressive rhythm.
It is not flawless. Loot still floods your inventory, and the open-world gigs can blur together when you tackle too many in a row. But the moment-to-moment play now matches the ambition of the setting, which could not be said at launch.
The long road back
The history matters because it explains the reputation. The last-generation console versions were so unstable at launch that Sony pulled the game from the PlayStation Store between December 2020 and June 2021. Native PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions followed in February 2022, and the Edgerunners update later that year tied the game to the acclaimed Netflix anime. After 2.0 and Phantom Liberty in September 2023, the Ultimate Edition arrived that December alongside Update 2.1, which added a working metro. Update 2.2 at the end of 2024 even lets Johnny ride shotgun and comment while you drive.
The game has since reached Nintendo Switch 2 as a launch title in June 2025 and macOS in July 2025, both with the expansion. The turnaround was recognised with The Game Awards' Best Ongoing Game prize in 2023 and a BAFTA Games Award for Evolving Game in 2024. Full patch notes live on the official Cyberpunk 2077 news page, and the Wikipedia entry has a thorough timeline of the release saga.
Official resources
- Cyberpunk 2077 official site
- Official news and patch notes
- CD PROJEKT RED
- Cyberpunk 2077 on GOG
- Cyberpunk 2077 on Steam
- Cyberpunk 2077 on PlayStation
The verdict
A few bugs linger and some open-world busywork still feels thin, but the core is now excellent. If you wrote Cyberpunk off in 2020, it has earned a second look. Fans of The Witcher 3 will find the same razor-sharp writing under the chrome.
What we loved
- Night City is a stunning, dense setting
- The 2.0 skill and perk overhaul transforms builds
- Phantom Liberty is a superb spy thriller
- Reactive main story with a killer cast
What held it back
- Still the odd bug and physics quirk
- Open-world activities can feel repetitive
- The past still casts a shadow over its reputation
