Cyberpunk 2077
Scored 8.3/10. Judged as the game it became: Night City after the 2.0 rebuild and Phantom Liberty is a real place worth the trip.
This review dates itself on purpose. The 2020 launch version of Cyberpunk 2077 is not the game being scored here. The game being scored is the one CD Projekt Red rebuilt: the 2.0 update's overhauled systems and the Phantom Liberty expansion turned Night City from a promise into a place.
NIGHT CITY, FINALLY
V, a mercenary with Johnny Silverhand riding shotgun in their head, chasing an implant that is killing them. The city is dense, vertical, and mean in the right ways, and the side stories outwrite most games' main plots. Dogtown in Phantom Liberty is the best district in the game and the spy thriller built into it knows it.
WHY 8.3
The score carries the history: a launch that burned trust is part of this game's record forever, and some open world systems still run thinner than the skyline suggests. What stands now is a strong, strange, big hearted RPG. 8.3, earned the hard way.
THE INDUSTRY NUMBER
Two scoreboards live on this page and they never mix. The score at the top is Moe's, argued above and signed. The industry's number, the collective critic aggregate, sits here for reference: Metacritic 86. Same game, two verdicts. Read both, then play it yourself.
