Fast-forward to November 2023. I receive Phantom Liberty as a birthday gift and get playing. I resolve to play through the entire game from start to finish and not just do the DLC. That turned out to be a good thing because they have changed so much since my original playthrough. Especially the levelling system, which was a lot more extensive and a lot quicker. There seem to be less NCPD scanner things and less gigs in each zone, which makes completing each zone less of a hassle. I'm disappointed there still isn't any follow-up to Regina's cyberpsychosis research.
Ironically, now that everyone is praising the game for being good I'm starting to experience all the bugs people complained about the last time around. I've had CTDs, I've fallen through the map, I've had loot fall through the ground and vanish, quest NPCs getting stuck, calling the car simply not working and being stranded in the Badlands after a gig, having to reload the game to get quest prompts to work, and with a better GPU I could have larger crowds which meant I got to see first hand people's complaints about duplicate NPCs - hell I even had quadruplets attending the Samurai concert:
Complaining done, let's get into the good stuff.
I loved all the hints to Edgerunners that they've added to the game and until I got Johnny's jacket I ran around in David's. Once I got Johnny's I put David's jacket in my stash because I'm holding on to that ♥
I wanted to do all the side content available before I did any main story so I completed Watson before I even got the biochip, and then I did each zone before I moved on with the main quest. Which ended up meaning that I was almost level 50 by the time I started Phantom Liberty and got inside Dogtown.
The Phantom Liberty story was overall really great. Starting with a bang (literally), mellowing out as a multitude of questions rose up, before all hell broke loose at the conclusion. I made sure to make several separate saves so that I could unlock and see all the endings, just like I did with the base game back in 2021. The King of Wands and King of Swords endings were less dramatic and chaotic than the King of Cups and King of Pentacles endings. Those last two... My adrenaline was so high my hands were shaking by the time I got to make my final choice. That damn robot piece of shit junk... The new ending to the whole game made me super sad. 
Another thing I really liked about Dogtown was that the gigs there always came with a twist and they were never as cut and dry as the ones from the base game. Always a choice would pop up around the middle that could give the gig an entirely different outcome than you would originally think, sometimes for the better and sometimes the fixer would call afterwards and scold you. But that twist and choice & consequence really made those gig a lot more memorable. Run This Town is probably one of my favourite side quests in the DLC.
Last time I played I missed out on saving Takemura so this I made sure of that and then followed through on his ending so I could get that last achievement.
Speaking of achievements, some of them don't seem to work. I know for sure I affected 3+ enemies with one single Detonate Grenade quickhack more than once, but that achi never popped for me. I know I hit 2 enemies with the sname sniper rifle shot more than once, but that achi never popped either. And I rigorously used the Distract Enemy quickhack to get that achi, but that never popped either.
Towards the end of this playthrough they dropped Update 2.1 which added hangouts with your love interest, radio for walking, being able to take the metro around the city (sightseeing woooo!) and repeatable car races. I made sure to do everything.
I had a really great time with Cyberpunk this time around as well, despite this buggier experience!
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