A lot of mixed feelings about this game. I think overall it's ok but frustrating would be the word to describe this because it could've been so much better and I have a lot to say on that. Would've rated it a bit lower had the game not looked as nice or ran as well on my PC.
Intro was really dragged out and should've been halved, especially that time in the car. I liked the premise of the story but it was frustratingly predictable almost all the way through. Very few characters were memorable and it presented itself as a bit of a watered-down BioShock.
For a game that seems heavily political with a whole utopian Soviet Union theme, it didn't really go into much depth about the politics (it was a very barebones with some very occasional moments that were above surface level). There were parts where P-3 said he doesn't care about it and sometimes had the option to say you did/didn't care. To me it's clear they tried to appeal to a broader audience by not heavily politicising the game, but you can't both have an obviously very political design choice and try to water down the politics for those that aren't interested in it while expecting it to work well. It's like the story and concepts had the potential to be as wide as an ocean and could've been as deep but they chose to fill it as deep as a puddle. Massively missed opportunity in my view but I get why a lot of people would prefer less political exploration. Then again, BioShock does it very well where even the average player enjoys it.
Dialogue sometimes felt like it dragged on too long but generally enjoyed it and the voice acting. Most will probably find P-3 to be really obnoxious and annoying but I liked him most of the time. However, being pissed off 99% of the time contributed to him a pretty shallow character. Not only that, but he wasn't really questioning anything about himself until the "big reveal" despite all the people and signs telling him something's wrong.
The "big reveal" about P-3 felt sudden as there was no proper development up to that point, it was just "by the way you're xyz". There were moments where he could see/feel something is contradicting what he thinks is reality, but he has a convo with the glove, asks questions and then just doesn't process any new information as if it never happened. It's a relatively short game but they really could've made P-3 a lot better than an angry man with zero deduction skills where the glove has to do it for him.
Some of the good things about the gameplay: glove upgrade system which is fully refundable so you can experiment with different builds (I didn't bother, I was using the shield and Shok the entire game while maxing out character upgrades), looting by holding F and scanning across lootable sections was great, liked the guns and they felt useful and you have to think about how to approach groups of enemies as they can all easily knock you down. Music also slaps hard.
A lot of little things annoyed me though: robots felt like damage sponges and I prefer to not have to grind these types of games out so I switched to easy to enjoy the combat more. I didn't find the combat particularly difficult (dodging felt clunky though), just that putting many many bullets into the guys with mustaches for ages didn't appeal to me. Inventory management is terrible - I can stack 90 rounds for my AK in one slot, a few rounds for my rocket launcher in another but I can't stack more than 1 of those little health pods? Game should've been way more linear by cutting out the open world area. I understand the reason for it (padding content for a longer game being one) but it's not fun to lock things like attachments and weapon upgrades behind exploration in an uninteresting open world. I never bothered and beelined for the main objectives, upgrading the weapons to what was unlocked already. Map is terrible to navigate through, didn't feel intuitive to use and I basically never used it. At least beelining to the main objective was pretty straightforward.
The game does look amazing and ran pretty well on my system (3070 with a Ryzen 7900X on near-max settings at 90+ fps, only dipping as low as 70 in some areas). Very occasional stutters but nothing terrible. I don't know how it was on release but nearly a year since release and it's in a pretty good state.
I'd recommend this on a big sale (at least 50%, I played this on a PC game pass trial) and not bothering with the open world part. The game isn't interesting enough to warrant spending more than double the time I did on the game for some upgrades (unless you really want a specific upgrade).
Intro was really dragged out and should've been halved, especially that time in the car. I liked the premise of the story but it was frustratingly predictable almost all the way through. Very few characters were memorable and it presented itself as a bit of a watered-down BioShock.
For a game that seems heavily political with a whole utopian Soviet Union theme, it didn't really go into much depth about the politics (it was a very barebones with some very occasional moments that were above surface level). There were parts where P-3 said he doesn't care about it and sometimes had the option to say you did/didn't care. To me it's clear they tried to appeal to a broader audience by not heavily politicising the game, but you can't both have an obviously very political design choice and try to water down the politics for those that aren't interested in it while expecting it to work well. It's like the story and concepts had the potential to be as wide as an ocean and could've been as deep but they chose to fill it as deep as a puddle. Massively missed opportunity in my view but I get why a lot of people would prefer less political exploration. Then again, BioShock does it very well where even the average player enjoys it.
Dialogue sometimes felt like it dragged on too long but generally enjoyed it and the voice acting. Most will probably find P-3 to be really obnoxious and annoying but I liked him most of the time. However, being pissed off 99% of the time contributed to him a pretty shallow character. Not only that, but he wasn't really questioning anything about himself until the "big reveal" despite all the people and signs telling him something's wrong.
The "big reveal" about P-3 felt sudden as there was no proper development up to that point, it was just "by the way you're xyz". There were moments where he could see/feel something is contradicting what he thinks is reality, but he has a convo with the glove, asks questions and then just doesn't process any new information as if it never happened. It's a relatively short game but they really could've made P-3 a lot better than an angry man with zero deduction skills where the glove has to do it for him.
Some of the good things about the gameplay: glove upgrade system which is fully refundable so you can experiment with different builds (I didn't bother, I was using the shield and Shok the entire game while maxing out character upgrades), looting by holding F and scanning across lootable sections was great, liked the guns and they felt useful and you have to think about how to approach groups of enemies as they can all easily knock you down. Music also slaps hard.
A lot of little things annoyed me though: robots felt like damage sponges and I prefer to not have to grind these types of games out so I switched to easy to enjoy the combat more. I didn't find the combat particularly difficult (dodging felt clunky though), just that putting many many bullets into the guys with mustaches for ages didn't appeal to me. Inventory management is terrible - I can stack 90 rounds for my AK in one slot, a few rounds for my rocket launcher in another but I can't stack more than 1 of those little health pods? Game should've been way more linear by cutting out the open world area. I understand the reason for it (padding content for a longer game being one) but it's not fun to lock things like attachments and weapon upgrades behind exploration in an uninteresting open world. I never bothered and beelined for the main objectives, upgrading the weapons to what was unlocked already. Map is terrible to navigate through, didn't feel intuitive to use and I basically never used it. At least beelining to the main objective was pretty straightforward.
The game does look amazing and ran pretty well on my system (3070 with a Ryzen 7900X on near-max settings at 90+ fps, only dipping as low as 70 in some areas). Very occasional stutters but nothing terrible. I don't know how it was on release but nearly a year since release and it's in a pretty good state.
I'd recommend this on a big sale (at least 50%, I played this on a PC game pass trial) and not bothering with the open world part. The game isn't interesting enough to warrant spending more than double the time I did on the game for some upgrades (unless you really want a specific upgrade).