There are few games with a redemption arc like Cyberpunk 2077, but while its “phoenix from the ashes” story has been well-told, it continues to be an absolutely phenomenal game in 2025.

Aside from running better than it ever has, regardless of what platform you play it on, Cyberpunk 2077 is the definition of a role-playing game: It’s a world you can inhabit. While walking the streets of Night City or the Dogtown region in the Phantom Liberty DLC, you’ll feel as though you can smell the food from street vendors or feel the drops of rain on your skin.

PC players get the best deal of all, as Cyberpunk 2077 is a technical marvel nearly five years after its launch. While I’ve played it on consoles (including the Nintendo Switch 2 version), I always come back to that cozy feeling of being alone in Night City, headphones on, and an ultrawide monitor making me feel as if I’m in my apartment in some dingy corner of CD Projekt Red’s world. 

Here are four reasons why Cyberpunk 2077 stands alone, even years after launch.
 

Endless role-playing opportunities

As I mentioned above, Cyberpunk 2077 is the same kind of crunchy, life-devouring RPG that genre staples like Baldur’s Gate 3 have become.

The lead character V is a blank slate, but one that you can easily mold—both before the adventure starts and during your time in Night City—with small, playable preludes, a wealth of stat options, and visual customization too.

In one playthrough, I picked the Corpo V. He was chewed up and spat out by Night City’s largest corporate entities, and he carries a chip on his shoulder wherever he goes as a result.

In one of Phantom Liberty’s more climactic missions, an infiltration went awry as I was forced to take down a handful of guards with lethal precision. There was no binary choice of “Do you want to select path A (violence) or B (stealth)?” Things just unfolded that way.

I’ve played the mission at least twice before, and I thought relatively little of it until later in the mission when V is escorted out of the building by security. One particularly burly guard asked if I was responsible for the deaths of his comrades. Not only did I get a whole new dialogue scenario in that moment that I hadn’t seen before, but I was even able to pick a Corpo response, which I won’t spoil (but it wasn’t pleasant).

The ensuing ruckus was just as heart-pounding as the mission before it. The best part? There are dozens of these seemingly minuscule decisions to be made throughout Cyberpunk 2077, and I’ll happily spend years chasing them all.
 

Big story moments

V’s part in the larger story, one that involves the huge corporations that run the city and even drags in the president of the USA in the expansion, is still a deeply personal one. 

The initial heist at Arasaka Corporation is intense, sure, but what begins as a slick, sci-fi heist like we’d all dreamed of pulling in our playground fantasies soon gives way to a dark, unsettling trip to Night City’s underworld. From watching Ripperdocs indulge in malpractice just because they can to experiencing what is essentially a first-person snuff film, Cyberpunk 2077 doesn’t pull its punches.

I’m trying my best to keep this spoiler-free because ruining any of Cyberpunk 2077’s big story beats would be cruel, but the way one mid-game section weaves an act of domestic terrorism into breaching the infamous Blackwall juggles chaos and horror in a way that I can’t remember any other game doing so deftly.

It’s fair to say that one playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077, however you play it, is enough to change you somewhat, as hyperbolic as that may sound.

While there are other sci-fi RPGs, no other has offered a grimy world bent into the kind of freakish, dreamlike state that feels so surreal and yet so familiar as Cyberpunk 2077. 
 

Night City is a true star

Cyberpunk 2077’s main location is just as expansive vertically as it is horizontally, and despite inhabiting a setting seemingly so cruel and packed with injustice, it remains a place where the smallest lights haven’t gone out.

Night City itself is a blend of nightmare and ethereal dreams, where metal meets flesh and neon light meets steel girders. It’s a joy to explore just to take in its darkest depths and highest peaks.

While hunting for one of the Tarot Card locations in Night City during the daytime, I was struck by the sun setting in the distance. Sitting on a rooftop, I just watched as the sun fell behind the buildings across the street, watching as its ray tracing gave way to neon bouncing off of small puddles from the day before.

It got me thinking: Night City is seemingly the most dangerous place in the United States, but was there beauty to be found? I walked its streets from the dusty Heywood district to the Badlands, enjoying gorgeous views of the ocean in Pacifica.

And yet, my fondest memory of this jaunt was finding one of those aforementioned little lights.

Dogtown, introduced in the Phantom Liberty expansion, is half glitzy casino resort and half literal warzone. On the rougher side of that divide, I found a small group of people gathered, cooking on a BBQ grill and listening to a lone guitarist playing on a sofa.

As beautiful as some of the game’s regions may be, it’s the people that you might find yourself coming back for.
 

A modern-day immersive sim

If you're a fan of Deus Ex and Dishonored, you'll likely be missing the same kind of choice-based gameplay those titles offer. In many ways, Cyberpunk 2077 feels like the continuation of that same strand of game design, only expanded across a much larger playground and with much more impressive visual fidelity.

It means that every time I’ve returned to Cyberpunk 2077, I’ve found something new that I can bend to my advantage or use to send enemies scattering.

Back in Dogtown, I was tasked with sneaking into a Voodoo Boys base. It’s possible to shoot your way through almost every scenario in Cyberpunk 2077, so that’s what I did. I equipped a series of perks and parts to turn invisible, slow down time, and pop headshots as if I’m playing Fallout 4.

On my next playthrough, I toyed with a poisonous Contagion build so that I could hack into one foe, use the Ping Quickhack to find their pals (often without needing to enter any other room), and upload a virus to relieve them of their lives.

Reaching the basement can also be achieved entirely with stealth and no gimmicks, just quick thinking and a handy side entrance with plenty of cover. Once I was in, I faced a choice: Kill the Netrunner blackmailing an innocent woman and threatening to kill her or spare him.

The rub? The Netrunner in question is actually being used by an undercover agent working to bring down the Voodoo Boys from the inside. Kill the runner, and you’ll have to kill the agent too, which closes off another mission later in the DLC.

After enjoying the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners anime (which you really should watch if you haven’t), I popped back into the game to try a build inspired by David, the show’s protagonist, and his Sandevistan implant.

That same situation I mentioned was handled very differently, as I froze time and essentially pummelled enemies with my Gorilla Arms. In fact, I didn’t fire a single bullet as I bulldozed through the Voodoo Boys hideout, but no one was left standing by the time I left.

Expect another major update to the base Cyberpunk 2077 sometime "soon". Yet to experience the best Night City has to offer? Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition has the main game and Phantom Liberty.