Better than The New Order—much better for the first couple hours. More (and better) stealth, great new guns, none of those pace-destroying third-person cutscenes…it's everything a spinoff needs! (Actually, the new guns might be too good. I had hardly any reason not to just switch between the Bombenschluss and Schockhammer for 90% of the game.) The halfway point introduces a couple annoying difficulty spikes, though, both in the combat and through "where am I supposed to go now" level design hiccups. It doesn't help that the new traversal mechanics leave a lot to be desired—the visual indicators for both climbable and breakable walls are indistinguishable from the variance in the regular textures, and there's no way to use e.g. ziplines for any strategic purpose in battle. It's just "press E/LMB to go to the next part of the level". Also, the final boss kinda sucks. Not as awful as last game's (I think the scenario has potential, at least), but for some inscrutable reason, the boss's hurtbox is tiny, and he moves around a ton, and every time you take a shot at him he retaliates with a nigh-unavoidable attack. Recipe for disaster! At least I didn't have to lower the difficulty to "Can I Play, Daddy?" to finish the damn game this time.

But you know, I had a good time with this one. It's three hours of the game I desperately wanted The New Order to be, and three hours of mildly frustrating silliness. 3 star classic!