Short version: I love it, but I'm aware that's largely because it happens to hit a lot of my personal predilections, much like the first game.
It falls very short on a few things though.
Firstly, for a game that supposedly takes place in a bustling futuristic metropolis the world feels awfully uninhabited. You'll occasionally see NPCs in unreachable ares or behind windows and you'll hear snatches of conversation while running past buildings but the only NPCs you can interact with in gameplay are the enemies you fight or flee from and quest-givers who stand unmoving in place.
This could be somewhat justified by the setting. After all, you're running about on rooftops. Not many people are going to be walking around on the roof of a city building. However in later areas you're charging through penthouses and rooftop cafes and sun lounges and even people's apartments. All areas that should be inhabited and yet are eternally empty. I read a comment somewhere that described it as being alone in an Apple store after everyone has clocked out.
This starts to bleed into the story as well. There's not much in the way of world building because most of the world is happening somewhere else, maybe thirty stories under your feet. Even a few major story points have a tendency to happen way over there or out the window.
I imagine this was largely a money-saving measure and I'm sympathetic to that. Saves a bunch on animation and scripting and AI and who knows what else would be needed to have decent NPCs in an open world game. The game overall gives the impression of being a relatively low-budget passion project that EA threw to DICE in order to keep them off the windowsill between Battlefield releases, but I do wish they'd been able to put more into this.
Secondly, the overworld map is design isn't great. As someone who has gradually come to despise open world games it feels weird to say this, but it isn't quite open enough. It's less open world and more a tangle of semi-linear paths. So traversing from A to B isn't a case of finding the most efficient path but rather a matter of just using the exact same route you did from B to A ten minutes ago. There's a fast travel system to cut down on excessive repetition, but players will become very familiar with certain parts of the map.
Lastly, the combat is... oddly balanced. It isn't hard, in fact it's very forgiving. Which is kind of the problem. It's very easy to be bad at it because the game isn't hard enough to force you to improve. But it will make you feel like a clumsy oaf if you don't get good at it. I'm a quick learner and once I did get good I was having a fine old time feeling like a petite human wrecking ball. However I get the distinct impression that not everyone had that experience. I saw a lot of 'Let's Play' footage of people being terrible at the combat and getting frustrated but not actually improving because it's easy enough that one can stumble through it while still being shit at it.
But that's just, like, my opinion man.
It falls very short on a few things though.
Firstly, for a game that supposedly takes place in a bustling futuristic metropolis the world feels awfully uninhabited. You'll occasionally see NPCs in unreachable ares or behind windows and you'll hear snatches of conversation while running past buildings but the only NPCs you can interact with in gameplay are the enemies you fight or flee from and quest-givers who stand unmoving in place.
This could be somewhat justified by the setting. After all, you're running about on rooftops. Not many people are going to be walking around on the roof of a city building. However in later areas you're charging through penthouses and rooftop cafes and sun lounges and even people's apartments. All areas that should be inhabited and yet are eternally empty. I read a comment somewhere that described it as being alone in an Apple store after everyone has clocked out.
This starts to bleed into the story as well. There's not much in the way of world building because most of the world is happening somewhere else, maybe thirty stories under your feet. Even a few major story points have a tendency to happen way over there or out the window.
I imagine this was largely a money-saving measure and I'm sympathetic to that. Saves a bunch on animation and scripting and AI and who knows what else would be needed to have decent NPCs in an open world game. The game overall gives the impression of being a relatively low-budget passion project that EA threw to DICE in order to keep them off the windowsill between Battlefield releases, but I do wish they'd been able to put more into this.
Secondly, the overworld map is design isn't great. As someone who has gradually come to despise open world games it feels weird to say this, but it isn't quite open enough. It's less open world and more a tangle of semi-linear paths. So traversing from A to B isn't a case of finding the most efficient path but rather a matter of just using the exact same route you did from B to A ten minutes ago. There's a fast travel system to cut down on excessive repetition, but players will become very familiar with certain parts of the map.
Lastly, the combat is... oddly balanced. It isn't hard, in fact it's very forgiving. Which is kind of the problem. It's very easy to be bad at it because the game isn't hard enough to force you to improve. But it will make you feel like a clumsy oaf if you don't get good at it. I'm a quick learner and once I did get good I was having a fine old time feeling like a petite human wrecking ball. However I get the distinct impression that not everyone had that experience. I saw a lot of 'Let's Play' footage of people being terrible at the combat and getting frustrated but not actually improving because it's easy enough that one can stumble through it while still being shit at it.
But that's just, like, my opinion man.
