I genuinely think this is a fun game, but goodness does this game have some issues that drive me up the wall, especially as a long time player with approx. 200-250 ish hours between my old playstation save and this one.
For starters: This game does, to some extent, mislead you. Back in the day, it was much more akin to the original vision of a robot guerilla war, and the atmosphere still holds up. I like the weight system over the old style of the tetris inventory, and there certainly is an element of inventory management, but it isn't satisfying. It has a lot of strange console carry overs, and it's REALLY easy to accidently destroy stuff and store stuff you don't want. This is a VERY MINOR nitpick, but this is a death by thousand cuts scenario.
Next: Bugs. This game has a number of bugs, which is sort of a problem when the devs announced NO MORE UPDATES. Scopes are virtually unusable without substantial point investment because the reticle twitches back and fourth, severely exacerbated with inputs to correct for sway. I suspect some sort of implementation regarding mouse input was a huge hackjob, or they screwed the sway/recoil system. This bug has been in for YEARS, and it affects virtually ALL weapons, though low magnification and iron sights are the least affected given they aren't zoomed in. The gaul to sell a bunch of DLC weapons while a number of bugs like this are still in the game is astonishing, full stop.
On the topic of DLC, let's talk about art style. This game occupies a very peculiar zone between realism and immersion and cartoonish exaggeration. Compare the base game weapons, which are (excluding the experimental weapons, which are supposed to look odd compared to the rest of the arsenal to justify the rarity and extra buffs) for the most part pretty grounded and not cartoony. This does NOT carry over to the DLC weapons to nearly the same extent, which have a noticeably less grounded visuals, see the RACS-12, M60, et al.
Finally, this game has a HUGE identity crisis. On one hand, you *can* play all the missions solo and be out in a reasonable amount of time (in my opinion, including some progression and the scenic route, a cool 20 or 30 hours). However, the late game content is much harder to use. For instance, the weapon mods, which can imbue a weapon with a lot of really helpful effects, are annoyingly expensive, which means you essentially NEED friends to grind out the control points to harvest them. This, as well as the heavy emphasis on percentiles from the modding mechanic, has turned this game from a guerilla war against an imposing foe to a lame FPS with light RPG mechanics so you can actually get up to the end game content. Factoring in the fact that the AI is incredibly unimposing when fighting from a structure, and only hard to fight when there are a billion of them when you have no cover (pro cheese tip: you can dodge most of the bullets by occasionally sprinting and jumping around, and you can avoid rocket barrages by alternately peeking from different sides of a singular building).
In essence, if you can overlook the fact the game is only partially a robot guerilla war, and you enjoy lite RPG mechanics and can overlook the poor stealth options, then it is a great game with friends and kinda good solo. IF you want something a little more serious, go play a game that respects you a little more, and devs that properly support their product. Also, in case you're wondering, this game does suffer from empty open world syndrome HARD, hence the fast travel.
