Phantom Liberty behaves like a tightly focused mini-campaign tucked inside a huge RPG. If you stay on its main track and sample some of the better side gigs, you’re looking at roughly 15–25 hours to see the heart of the story. For a busy adult playing 5–10 hours a week, that’s two to four weeks of regular evening sessions. Individual missions are usually structured enough that one or two make a satisfying night’s play, with natural breaks after big decisions or debrief scenes. The game is very friendly to real-life interruptions: you can pause almost anywhere and drop manual saves before major operations. The tradeoff is that coming back after a long break means re-reading quest logs and remembering which build you’re running. There’s no pressure to group up, schedule raids, or keep up with seasons; it’s purely single-player on your terms. Overall, it asks for a moderate, finite commitment and pays it back with a complete, well-paced story arc rather than an endless grind.

Phantom Liberty asks for a steady but not overwhelming level of attention. During missions in Dogtown you’re juggling aiming, cover, quickhacks, and positioning, often while listening for clues in dialogue or radio chatter. Stealth-heavy jobs in particular reward scanning cameras, watching patrol paths, and timing your moves, so they’re not great for half-watching a show on a second screen. When you’re driving to objectives, looting, or tinkering with your build, the game relaxes and lets your brain idle a bit more. Shots don’t need esports-level precision, and generous healing plus slow‑motion tools give you time to correct mistakes, which keeps fights from feeling frantic. For a typical busy adult, this plays best when you can bring reasonable focus but don’t want the total mental drain of a hardcore strategy game or raid night. Expect to be engaged most of the time, but with enough quieter stretches that you can breathe between big decisions and set‑piece encounters.

From a skill perspective, Phantom Liberty is welcoming if you’ve touched Cyberpunk 2077 before and manageable even if you’re rusty. Basic shooting, sneaking, and hacking come back quickly, and the expansion introduces its new Relic abilities gradually. You’ll feel basically competent after a few missions, even on Normal. The real depth lies in leaning into a focused build and learning how Dogtown’s levels flow. As you understand sightlines, enemy behaviors, and your favorite tools, missions that once felt messy start to look almost choreographed. That said, mastery is optional rather than mandatory. You can finish the campaign just fine with a slightly sloppy build on a lower difficulty, especially if you prefer story over challenge. For players who enjoy improving, though, there’s satisfying payoff in upgrading from “barely surviving” to “cool, efficient operator.” The game asks for a modest learning push up front and rewards extra effort with smoother runs, flashier takedowns, and more freedom in how you tackle each job.

Emotionally, Phantom Liberty sits in a middle band: more tense and heavy than the base game’s average gig, but far from a nonstop panic state. Set-piece missions mix sneaking through guarded facilities, prison breaks, and car chases, which can spike your heart rate, yet frequent checkpoints and forgiving builds mean failure never feels catastrophic. The real weight comes from the story’s spy-thriller tone. You’re dealing with double agents, betrayals, body horror, and some brutally tough choices about who to save and what price you’re willing to pay. That can linger after a session, especially if you’re sensitive to themes of sacrifice or exploitation. For most players, though, it’s closer to watching an intense prestige TV episode than enduring a horror game. It asks you to handle moderate adrenaline in fights and some emotional gut punches, and in return you get a gripping, grown-up story that feels serious without constantly overwhelming you. If you’re already comfortable with M-rated games, you’ll probably find the stress level engaging rather than draining.