As someone who absolutely loved this game upon release, replaying it has been extremely underwhelming, and I feel my experience with it has been made a lot worse by replaying the first two games right before it.

Columbia is fine. It's beautiful to look at, but it's nowhere near as interesting or atmospheric as Rapture and you can't really explore it all that much. The first thing I did when Booker landed on Columbia was press on the touchpad to bring up the map, only to be met with a list of whatever my objectives were at the time (which was unnecessary, since the game leads you straight to where you need to go anyways). There are optional paths here and there, but my favorite thing about the first game had clearly taken a backseat in this one. Couple that with occasionally awful dialogue (the decision to make the protagonist of the first game silent was clearly Irrational Games playing to their strengths), social commentary that is surface-level at best and slightly problematic at worst, and an ending sequence that feels like it hasn’t been fully thought through, and you end up with a game that 13 year old me (I know, I know) thought was a masterpiece and 22 year me thinks is a whelming piece of media.

I don’t know. I mean, I still think it’s a good game and I had fun playing it, but it’s all a little underwhelming.