If you're an Alien fan, this game is a must buy. Remember that it's a Double A title but comes with plenty of improvements from the first. The storyline is just as good from its predecessor, you actually get to fight the Queen this time, but note that the NPC voice acting/dialogue choices are awful. You will not miss anything by skipping the NPC dialogue at the main hub. They kind of treat you like a dumb grunt kid, even after you've wiped out 5,000 aliens and their queen.
There's 15 missions total and 3 horde mode levels, each mission probably taking 20-45 minutes depending on your difficulty. Plenty of accessibility options for the HUD and FOV, and the shadows/lighting/animation quality looks much better in the sequel on their Unreal Engine 4.26 or whatever it is. This is not Unreal Engine 5, but still looks really damn good.
A lot of players think the only cosmetic/gun/skill unlocks are in the in-game market. Not true. Each class has a level system, then your character has a separate level system. Each time you level one or the other, you're either getting a new gun or armor set, some other goodies. Solid progression rewards. A lot of the unlockables are hidden behind level unlocks, you can scope this out in the Collections section.
No microtransactions (other than DLC). Everything is unlocked by playing and earning in-game creds.
They've allowed custom armor decal assignment for your chest piece which can be fun. You can decorate it with funny/badass decal stamps that can be resized and manually placed. They also put in recoloring of your armor with different paints, can mix and match helmet/torso/pants.
You need to play through until you get into the endgame. Once you start entering Intense difficulty and higher, you have to start relying on class diversification and taking each encounter much slower. This is where it gets insanely fun and definitely challenging.
Customization is through the roof. Way more camos, emotes, armor sets, gun selection, attachments from the first. Class skill mods have expanded and they have introduced endgame skill mods/gun augments that allow you to finetune your preferred playstyle. The different level aesthetics are awesome and they have included the Pathogen aliens in the base game instead of requiring DLC from the first game.
Sure, a bit clunky with some light bugs on launch, that'll be tidied up in the near future. This is a classic horror horde shooter and will eat hundreds of hours of playtime. Like I said, if you're an Alien fan, you'll have a blast regardless of any negative feedback you see scrolling through the reviews.
