Unfortunately this one fell a tiny bit off the mark for me when I take off the nostalgia goggles. The whole concept of getting a heist team together is pretty satisfying and the fact all the people you recruit are playable is a very good touch, but overall it just falls short of the mark for me for a couple reasons.

The mechanics on the characters outside of the 3 feel super underbaked, and on top of that - they're used pretty sporadically. I'd be a bit more enthused if I could just go around mind controlling the guru in the hub areas, or shoot shit up with the panda king anytime at pleasure, but you can't. theyre capped to certain missions and those in turn just end up being super tedious, as you'll go hours without using a character and than be thrusted in to a mission with them - which again, works well with the story but gameplay wise falls short.

The pluses of this game compared to its predecessors for me are definitely the new mechanics used per level with sly, like the dogfighting, treasure hunting, boat fights. While some of that was tedious, it was not nearly as bad as something like flying Penelope's helicopter

While I didn't despise my time with this game, and overall did enjoy where they took the story and characters - this one really just fell short for me when comparing it to the 2nd game (tbc ill add more one day just cant be bothered rn)