Part of me almost wonders if it’s been elevated because it’s frequently featured on those benchmark videos that have gotten so popular lately. Heavy use of ray tracing, frequently updated to get new features, very tweakable, and thousands of videos using Cyberpunk as the standard for hardware to be measured by just puts a bug in your head.

PL brought a trait system overhaul, cyberware overhaul, and combat overhaul that dramatically changed up the gameplay loop even in the core game.

The story was always amazingly crafted, but the game never warranted a second play through. Now it does.

CP was shit and unplayable on consoles at release and more-or-less buggy depending on hardware but fully playable on PC. It did not live up to the grandiose marketing promises but it is a wonderful game for what it is. Interesting world, varied quests/gigs/jobs with interesting decisions to make, super fun weapons, and now a fun skill build mechanics.

Phantom Liberty is peak Cyberpunk, but the game itself is great - at release and now even more. Does not excuse the pathetic release though and deceiving marketing. At least they did something with it.