This is a sad one to abandon because when the game hits, it's great fun. The world and its various factions, exploring a surprisingly beautiful and mysterious ocean world, the political intrigue that you get caught up in during the many separate faction chapters of the game, the MUSIC! that has this ethereal tone and features what sounds like Mongolian throat singing, etc.

What didn't work was that combat instantly went from too easy to bafflingly difficult. I was untouchable for the first campaign. (besides the final mission). It's satisfying and fun too, once I got the hang of the confusing controls. Get to the second one and I'm dying constantly. The problem is that I can't tell when or where enemy fire is coming from. Evading fire by dodging also didn't feel great and it's extremely hard to get one's bearing doing all these barrel rolls and the camera getting kinda wonky. I couldn't tell when I needed to dodge or if it was even effective.

Finally, the kicker that led to my giving up, was that the game had WAY too many escort missions. Really not fun, even though you are escorting them through a picturesque and tranquil ocean world. There needed to be some sort of activity to keep me engaged during the tedious flights. Especially because any failure in the mission requires you to fly back to the mission start and do the escort all over again. NO CHECKPOINTS!

One final note: The dualsense features were awesome! The adaptive triggers to shoot, the haptics, the voices coming through your controller speaker from companions and adversaries alike, all contributed to my immersion.