Phantom Liberty complementary review spoiler safe, I guess

[Estevan Valladares]

It is nice the game systems, the new content is fun. Adds some replayability and "sandboxy" elements. Most problems were fixed and it is nice to hop in and do some random work, shot some people. Etc.
What in my view is the worse offender of Phantom Liberty is the story and RPG elements.
Cyberpunk 2077 is defined by its own "publishers":
"Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world, action-adventure RPG set in the dark future of Night City — a dangerous megalopolis obsessed with power, glamor, and ceaseless body modification."
But you are not actually playing a role in the sense of RPG, as in Role Playing Game for the "overarching aims of the story". This problem was present in the original, and it is present in the DLC.

I play D&D for over 30 year now, and when narrating, I have lectured new players in the sense that RPG is role playing game, not role creating game, meaning you are also playing the game of Role Play, and the better you play your role, it would be more rewarding game wise, but for that to happen, you need to be free not to. Meaning, you can be, in the case I am citing, a "Lawful Evil" character and do "Chaotic Good" actions, but the RPG aspect is also a category that punishes you for that. A system D&D has for that gamefication of role play is inspiration. When you do things RPGwise "perfect" you gain inspiration. In my games I used to give people a Quartz gem meaning they are inspired, and when they used it, they would give that gem back to me. But all that to mean, RPG does not force you to do what your characters should, but rewards you for doing it, or punishes you for not doing it. Might be inspiration when they do, or distrust, punishing charisma check or other problems if you dont. I mean, a life long renowned thief cant claim to be honest and trustworthy character and expect no skeptcism, but they can make themselves "passable" by other means. That all to say, in an RPG you have choices, and you can be "punished" by making them, or they might not make a difference, but they are available.

Besides any continuity problem I have seen (doing one thing and NPCs reacting as if you did another, or nothing at all) and writing "short comings", one of my real problems with cyberpunk is that you always have to be interested in linear things, like linear things, answer in linear ways. To illustrate I will compare to romances. It is a solo game, it would not make any sense to restrict the choices from the RPG point of view in regards to who can romance who. It is probably to "save VA pay" that they restrict romances to a type, so they dont need to pay work for two branching stories. Well, the rest of the story development seem to go the same way. V might not care doing something, might say she did not cared at one point, further on, they have no option to "still not care" when they mostly still doesnt. You can simply not "sneak up" and instead go murder hobo on everyone, at one point you can act as if you never cared, next, you only have option to "be sorry it had to be that way" when you really does not need it for any "deception" or "persuasion" reason. It sometimes sound sarcastic without the "inflection" when you have only choices that could only be described as sarcastic given the history of dialogue.

But the endings and near endings are specially bad in this way, because they force a sad and melancholic vibe that is not there. Suddenly, you need to be emotionally weak, even if you spend the whole game YoLo and accepting your fate, and have 20 in cool.

I like the game for the game the whole middle of the game. But starts and ends for all stories are always dumbbed down to "visual novel" grades of linear story.

Hope next game do better in that regard, because it would be nice to have the actual vibe of the "mid game" in both begin and end too.

[Aelfwine_Gaming]

Thank you for this review, very eye-opening. I am thinking to purchase the DLC, and these reflexions that you cast are helping me to decide. Really interesting the part of role-playing vs role-creating.

[Chroniver]

I just finished the expansion yesterday and I get your critique of the story, but this isn't an attempt to translate the tabletop systems into a video game. It's very clearly an aRPG with a branching storyline.

Even games that explicitly try to emulate tabletop games like BG3 end up having branching narratives, though with a greater focus on the stats like you ask.
With games like Solasta not really delivering on the story but letting it up to modders.

Phantom Liberty was a continuation of what they set out to do in the base game for me but a lot more developed and impressive in the mission structure. I was truly impressed by the story and the detail of the environments as well as the writing. Honestly 10/10 for me.

As for the combat, I feel like you should experiment a bit more with different strategies there, there's quite a few ways to tackle situations.

100% agree with the ending bit though: it was not necessarily badly written but just depressing as hell. One of the most unsatisfying endings I ever saw in a video game, reloaded my previous save right after.