Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty - DF Tech Review - PS5/Xbox Series Tests + 2.0 Upgrade Breakdown

Cyberpunk 2077's massive Phantom Liberty expansion has arrived, its current-gen only nature allowing CD Projekt RED to push visual fidelity harder than the core game on release. In this tech review, Oliver Mackenzie assesses visual quality and performance in the expansion content, before circling back to the 2.0 update to the core game to see if that has improved over the older code.

00:00 Overview
01:08 Phantom Liberty visuals and performance
07:06 Patch 2.0 changes and performance
11:45 Final thoughts

[cody]

I think it just looks awesome once you turn off film grain and chromatic aberration in either mode. It really clears up the finer details

[Denden-kjrn]

sad to see red engine and its tech go but what they managed to achieve with this is abolutley incredible even if consoles dont get all the goodies

[gavinhart]

surprised they didn't update FSR to the latest version for a more clean image and less break up.

[goldmemberpb]

Imagine if we just waited for this game until 2023. We would have gotten this level of polish and the DLC all in one.

[gamingletloose]

Thank you for bringing some much needed attention to the FSR 2.1 & DRS issue on the Xbox consoles Oliver. I have another vid on my channel showing the issue. If anyone has this problem regarding the break up of FSR and then re-resolving over the next few frames, which I am fairly certain all Xbox Series players will have, and it bothers you please take a moment and file a bug report on the official forums. The developers as far as I understand are still looking into the problem since it was introduced in patch 1.61

[TylerHNothing]

best part of the video is honestly @8:57 watching Jackie do that side step over and over in both patches

[chrisvillan]

The PC version obviously looks stunning on the right hardware but this still looks very impressive on consoles I think. I played the ps5 upgrade last year and enjoyed it a lot

[bartoszwooszyk]

Playing on PS5 here, RT mode. Im quite surprised by DF suggestion that local RT shadows don’t bring much to the table. With so much happening inside, the difference can be really visible. Everything is more grounded and doesn’t look as flat as performance mode. I’d rather have the 60fps but in this case, the RT looks just beautiful, even if it’s just local shadows. Amazing job, CDPR

[space_cat_]

For frame drops when driving or in crowded areas, I’ve found that restarting the game seems to help and make the experience more fluid. Maybe it’s some memory or caching issue after hours of gameplay? I’m playing on PS5, for the record.

[mettana]

4:26 "sometimes" No, it's constant. And it's still very obvious in performance mode too. That issue has been in the main game on Xbox Series for a very long time, as well as constant stutter/hitching in performance mode and FreeSync being completely broken. People keep acting like the game is so polished now, but I think that's only because of the contrast effect from having launched in such a catastrophic state. The game is STILL one of the least polished that I've played on XSX, and riddled with bugs and technical issues. It took them until 2.0 just to get billboard textures to stream properly in first person driving mode (this applied to all platforms), a bug that existed since day 1. Wish you guys would do a proper deep dive into the XSX performance mode framerate drops and stutter in the main game, because you greatly understated how bad that was in your previous videos. And why is Freesync non-functional on XSX when it works perfectly in TW3 remaster (same engine and devs).

[dustinhilltenor]

Great continued work by CDPR, and these new consoles are really showing their strengths. While they cannot do DLSS 3.5 (or any) as mentioned, definitely a playable experience for a HEAVY game to run on PC!

[raphaelhatake]

Finally you guys addressed the FSR flickering & artifacting on the Series consoles!!!!
This problem exists since the introduction of FSR 2.1 with the update 1.61....
And CDPR just doesn't do anything about it.

That this bug has been around for almost a year now is very frustrating....

[myytti]

Btw. Oliver, you are doing amazing job on these videos. You may cover things faster (shorter videos) but it is your own distinctive style and I like it. Thank you!

[marekk.]

One thing I'd like to point out (especially compared to Starfield) is that the world, despite being massive, has pretty much zero loading screens. So whatever streaming tech they have implemented must impact the performance (and potentially tax the cpu, therefore explaining the frame drops) while rapidly traversing through the city. All in all, I'd say it's pretty impressive.

[Matteo_]

I think the new driver/vehicle AI is causing some (not all) of these wild FPS drops on console. CDPR has stamped out a lot of bugs, but now the traffic situation is out of control broken at times, with frequent and hilarious chaos taking over at random.

Cyberpunk always had goofy car glitches, sure... but it was never quite this bad before, in over 100hrs of play. The occasions are so dramatic and frequent now that its hard to dismiss, and while The Glen and City Center seem most prone to this behavior, it definitely happens around Watson too.

Really though, barring a big patch this morning (the 26th)... I challenge anyone on console to thoroughly play in busy areas and NOT notice multiple, wild vehicle glitches- cars piling up, cars spontaneously exploding, NPCs driving along happy in burned-out wrecks, or casually abandoning their vehicle in oncoming traffic. Its ridiculously common now, and way more prevalent than 1.6. Sunday I streamed a session for my friends that involved DOZENS of wild traffic interactions, with many causing immediate dips and endless laughs.

Often, when I experience unusual FPS drops in familiar areas, I can find some of this comedy gold nearby. There is just no way this level of AI and physics dysfunction ain't causing issues. I really think this is condition in some of the wildly variable performance in crowded zones (and why a restart might fix it).

[rkitchen]

I hope CDPR continue to improve performance mode for the consoles, getting closer to a locked 60fps.

[moonknightish]

0:24 No, SONY took the game from sales because they didn't want to issue refunds.

[VVVHHHSSS]

I love this game, hoping for a sequel. It's easily one of my favorite worlds to explore, just a classic game.

[razehellgaming]

I play on a laptop with an intel i7 11h series cpu, 16gb ram and an Nvidia rtx3050ti 4gb vram and patch 2.0 made my overall gameplay smoother. Nvidia Geforce Experience auto-sets the graphics at a higher level than before and Cyberpunk 2077 maintains higher than 30fps and if I lower the settings slightly I can maintain a mostly stable 60fps. Before the patch I could only keep a framerate of 30fps at medium settings and 60fps on low settings with dlss on if I lowered the output resolution to 900p.

[fuzzymammoth]

The new vignette needs a toggle option. I already have issues with my vision in low light, and this has really affected my enjoyment of the experience. I love the game but it's making me strain my eyes so much.