Leaving Night City can make the next game surprisingly difficult to choose, because the part you miss might be a person, a place or the ridiculous thing your finished build could do to a room full of enemies. Another neon skyline is easy enough to find, but the right follow up depends on which of those memories has you wanting to go back.
These games like Cyberpunk 2077 take that question in ten different directions, from Deus Ex's inventive routes through a job to the people trying to get by in Citizen Sleeper. All are available on PC through Steam, and each offers a particular part of the appeal, whether you want another crew, more freedom to experiment or just a very good reason to drive through the city at night.
A locked door in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is usually the beginning of a decision. Adam Jensen's augmentations let you look at a building as a collection of possible routes, weighing a hacked terminal against an awkward climb or an entrance that becomes much easier once you can deal with the person watching it. If developing V meant finding increasingly inventive ways to avoid the front door, Jensen is very good company.
Prague brings that freedom into a smaller, more closely packed setting, where investigating an apartment can be more interesting than crossing a huge district. Learning your way around lets the city reveal more of the people living under its tensions, while another augmentation can change how you approach a familiar space. The scale is different from Night City, but the pleasure of turning a character build into an actual way through a problem is very much here.
The people you miss after Cyberpunk may matter more than the streets, especially when a favourite mission is really a memory of the person who called you about it. Mass Effect builds an entire trilogy around that attachment, letting Commander Shepard assemble a crew whose private concerns keep finding their way into the much larger job of saving the galaxy. Going back to the Normandy becomes a chance to find out how everybody is doing.
Legendary Edition carries those relationships and many of your decisions through the original three games, giving an introduction in the first adventure room to become something more important later. Shepard has a more defined role than V, and the missions move between distinct locations, but the continuity is the attraction. Begin with the first game and let the crew become familiar before asking the galaxy to start falling apart around them.
Talos I is full of obstacles that become much more interesting when you stop treating them as instructions to find the correct key. Prey's GLOO Cannon can hold an alien in place, but its hardening foam can also become a makeshift route up a wall, turning a useful weapon into a solution to a completely different problem. Once that possibility occurs to you, a room starts looking like somewhere to experiment with the tools and powers you have brought.
That makes it a strong follow up to the part of Cyberpunk spent testing a new build on an unsuspecting job, though the mood is considerably more anxious. The station is a place you gradually learn to navigate, with resources worth considering before you commit to a fight. Its science fiction mystery works best when you leave the surprises alone, so arrive knowing that ingenuity will help and discover the rest when you get there.
Wei Shen has the sort of job that gets harder the better he becomes at it. As an undercover officer working his way into Hong Kong's criminal world, he needs people to trust him while keeping track of what that trust is costing, which gives Sleeping Dogs' street fights and car chases a story worth following between the noise. His growing involvement keeps the city from becoming just somewhere to drive across.
The fighting gets you close to that world too, favouring counters, grapples and whatever unpleasant opportunity the surroundings provide. There is far less emphasis on building an RPG character than in Cyberpunk, but the combination of a convincing city, criminal loyalties and an increasingly complicated personal role makes the move from mercenary to undercover officer an easy one to understand. Stay for the people caught on both sides of Wei's life.
The Ascent makes a corporate collapse everybody's problem, beginning with a worker suddenly left to survive inside the enormous structure that used to own their life. Its crowded walkways and glaring advertisements make the machinery of this world hard to miss, especially when a firefight breaks out in the middle of the people trying to get on with their day. Moving the camera above the action has done very little to calm the city down.
Weapons and augmentations give that disorder some structure, letting you shape how your character handles the next violent interruption. It scratches the urge to improve a cybernetic fighter while spending more of its energy on shooting than long conversations, and you can bring friends if you fancy sharing the trouble. This is the useful next step when another elaborate build sounds appealing and you would like to put it to work almost immediately.
A room full of armed enemies looks rather different when you are crossing it along the walls with a katana, and Ghostrunner 2 is built around making that journey work. A single hit can end the attempt, so movement and timing become parts of the same decision as you work out whom to reach first and how to stay alive on the way there. Repeating the room gradually turns a desperate scramble into a sequence you can actually control.
That concentration is the appeal for anyone who finished Cyberpunk wanting to spend more time inside its fastest fights. Ghostrunner 2 keeps you moving through new traversal challenges and motorcycle sections, building a very different rhythm from a long RPG. The awkward stretches take practice, but knowing where the next enemy stands lets you move with a confidence the first attempt never had, until the whole sequence finally runs together.
Cyberpunk's corporations are at their most frightening when their power reaches into somebody's ordinary life, and Citizen Sleeper begins with that ownership written into your body. As an escaped worker living in an artificial form, you arrive on a space station needing food, money and a way to keep functioning. The dice available each day turn those needs into decisions about where to work, whom to help and which risk you can afford.
As people begin relying on you, surviving another cycle becomes tangled up with wanting a place in their lives. The station grows familiar through those obligations, making a small opportunity or a shared plan carry the kind of weight that a larger game might reserve for a spectacular mission. There is plenty to read, but the intimacy is precisely why it belongs after Night City: life under a corporation still has room for somebody to care.
Sometimes the thing you want back is simply the drive, with towers disappearing into the rain and a destination somewhere among all those lights. Cloudpunk puts Rania behind the controls of a delivery vehicle on her first night working in Nivalis, where carrying a package from one address to another becomes a way to meet the people keeping an immense city alive. Getting out and exploring on foot lets those distant windows become actual neighbourhoods.
The jobs leave room for conversations with residents whose worries are smaller and more recognisable than saving the world, even when the circumstances around them are strange. That gentler pace makes Cloudpunk an appealing place to linger after Cyberpunk's gunfights, particularly when the atmosphere was what kept you taking the long way to a mission. Come for the skyline and let an ordinary working night introduce the lives underneath it.
A useful crew is worth getting to know before the next job goes wrong, and Dragonfall builds its version of cyberpunk around the people you bring with you. Its Berlin mixes corporate power and cyberware with magic, making a team member's particular skills as important to the atmosphere as they are to a tactical fight. Between missions, learning why these people stay in the business gives their presence more weight than another weapon in the squad.
Combat gives you time to use those differences, while conversations let your own character influence how an assignment unfolds. The Director's Cut is a standalone game, so there is no need to play Shadowrun Returns first to begin this story. It is a good change of perspective after V's adventure when the next fixer call matters less than finding another group whose problems you want to become involved in.
Los Angeles has another set of dangerous people who would like to decide what your new life is worth, though becoming a vampire has made the negotiation rather less ordinary. Bloodlines uses your clan and abilities to shape a journey through its nocturnal politics, where getting to know a suspicious character can be more rewarding than getting through the next fight. The city is at its best when it lets somebody talk long enough to make you uneasy.
That appetite for strange encounters is the link to Cyberpunk, particularly if roleplaying through a morally grubby city was more compelling than the size of the map. This is the oldest game in the selection, and its rough combat and ageing presentation ask for patience. The reward is a distinctive social world, one that gives your character's identity plenty of opportunities to become inconvenient.
What should you play after Cyberpunk 2077?
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is the strongest place to begin when a new augmentation and an awkward building were your favourite combination. For people to get attached to, make room for Mass Effect or Dragonfall; Citizen Sleeper brings that interest closer to the ordinary cost of living under corporate power. If it is the city itself you miss, Cloudpunk supplies the drive while Sleeping Dogs supplies the trouble.
There is no need to replace every part of Cyberpunk at once. Pick the part you want more of tonight, then follow it somewhere new. Our RPG recommendations offer more character building adventures, while choosing from your own Steam library is a useful place to start when there are already several possibilities waiting.