This game is quite a mixed bag being so close to being a good game yet manages to border being a terrible one at the same time.
Good aspects:
The weapons: They feel powerful, look unique and the upgrades are the best in series in my opinion.
Certain story elements: The plot itself is pretty good, BJ's backstory is really cool getting to see why he is such a broken man, and Wyatt's LSD arc is interesting (But lasted way to long, and the characters should have noticed something was off about him sooner, in my opinion).
The ost: It was done Mick Gordon and it is really good, really par for the course with him to be honest.
Bad / subpar elements:
Difficulty: This game is infamous for being hard. Only 48% have the achievement for beating the game at all and only 32% beat it on "Bring 'em on" (normal-ish if I'm not mistaken). The hardest difficulty is a permadeath mode and of course they tied it to an achievement, it's a gimmick and isn't fun at all, at least Uber in TNO and TOB felt fair because they were challenging but gave you enough to overcome them with a little bit of strategy and were fun. However this game isn't super great on "Call me Terror-Billy!" Let alone any higher difficulty. (At least you can cheat doing it by downloading a save file from the community guide).
Character writing: It's not great in this game, the new characters tend to fall with Grace's main personality traits is being mean and unprofessional, and saying mf in every sentence, and her boyfriend making poop jokes till he dies later in the game. I will say at Sigrun (The fat nazi woman that joins you at the beginning of the game at least has some decent writing. When she acts out on the bridge she has a completely valid reason: 1. Her lover was being unfaithful and 2. Grace kept being mean to her. Even then at least she acknowledged her crashout and calmed down after, but Grace only stopped being mean after she was choked by Sigrun. Some of the actual Nazi npcs have better writing through their ambient dialogue, than Grace and her lover (I forgot his name lmao).
Political messaging and the portrayal of their message (?): This game when it was being marketing seemed to want to comment on events happening at the time, which isn't inherently bad, but I wonder if the writing also suffered because they wanted to preach so much. In the game there is a lot of reminders that nazis are evil (of course), and white america was really bad and evil (also of course), but something felt more forced about it in this game compared to the New Order. I think it might have been a case where they tried to tell you these things more than showed them. In the New Order it showed you Deathshead's evil experiments, it showed you a concentration camp, and it did a great job SHOWING you these things by having them as levels and displaying why the nazi's way of thinking was so evil. Here while there some things that are shown, I think it's more shallow, like kkk members walking around casually, or it tells you that something is bad. I think if they wanted make a point show things like a lynched black person, to SHOW me the player why the kkk was so bad or something on those lines. It also humanizes nazi's a lot, like in the underbelly of the u-boat you kill an npc and if the npc right next to him will say "You killed my brother, you bastard" or their views on life and society, and I find it interesting that a game that marketed itself on things like "You'd punch a nazi" or generally things upon the line nazi's suck, screw them, also choose to humanize them more than any other game or media I've watched. Which is interesting, because nazi's are people and I think most media doesn't want to fully show them acting like real people, I just find it odd that this game of all games / media choose to humanize them so much despite their whole marketing campaign trying to do the opposite (I guess). Idk it's interesting but I think the New Order manages to achieve most things that this game sets out to do but better, because that game is consistent with tone, and narrative.
Side missions: A lot of them are just retreading old levels, they're okay but kinda repetitive, I was tempted to get the achievement, but I'd have to farm enigma codes and that's just to boring for me to wanna do. Though they do allow you to get a lot of those really cool weapon kits, and the other contraptions.
Conclusion:
In conclusion I'd only pick this game up on sale because I think it's worth a couple playthroughs, but isn't worth the full price in opinion. If you haven't played any of the new wolfenstein games, make sure to play through the new order and the old blood first. Then if you like those check this one out, or just get them bundled together during a sale or something.
