Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty Praised; Some See It as GotY Material
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty delighted gamers on Steam - so much so that some of them would vote for it in the „best game of 2023” category if they could.
The basic version of Cyberpunk 2077 has received mostly great reviews from industry media, but gamers were much more critical of it. Nearlt for the past three years, studio CD Projekt Red has been making efforts to fix the game, and their quintessential efforts were to be the recently released patch 2.0 and, debuting today, the Phantom Liberty expansion.
Players are delighted with Phantom Liberty
The latter - just like the base game - has gathered excellent reviews from members of the press. Although the likelihood that the story would come full circle and the DLC would also turn out to be severely underdeveloped for release seemed slim, players had good reason to be concerned.
Fortunately Phantom Liberty is getting very good feedback from the community. The DLC has been reviewed by just over 2,000 Steam users, 90% of them positively. Of course, no "normal" viewer is likely to have completed the expansion yet, but first impressions - from a few hours that are a real no-holds-barred ride - are overflowing with superlatives.
GOTY 2023?
Fans seem delighted with Phantom Liberty so much so that in discussions on Steam they are encouraging to spread the discourse aimed at bringing Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty the 2023 game of the year award in voting on Valve's platform.
Of course, such a scenario will not come true. After all, this category only includes games that were released in the last twelve months can be nominated, and DLCs and updates are not taken into account. The studio's work will, at most, for the second time in a row, receive the award in the "labor of love" category - this time fully deservedly.
Nevertheless, the very fact that a large portion of gamers would be willing to cast their vote for the game now that the DLC is released is proof that - colloquially speaking - CD Projekt Red has "delivered".
Highest number of players on Steam since launch
Also supporting this argument is the number of people who play Cyberpunk 2077 on Steam (it's impossible to tell whether in the expansion or the base game). As I write these words, the game is run by 218,994 users of Valve's platform. A few hours earlier there were even more - 246,754.
Although far from the all-time record set around the premiere, which exceeded one million concurrent players, a better result than this has not been recorded since January 2021. Undoubtedly, this is another success that the CDPR can be proud of - especially since Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is also available on PC on GOG and Epic Games Store, as well as on PS5 and XSX/S.
