Definitely not as good as kid me thought it was, but still significantly better than the first 2 games.

Chips are better, bosses are generally a lot more fun (barring Bubbleman and Drillman, fuck those two), and the story is a lot more well written and consistent in quality. The net is also a lot less obnoxious to explore, although having to use the Press mechanic constantly kind of ruins the point of the NaviCust system. You may as well just keep Press equipped for most of the game.

Biggest issue the game has is that it ends up having the same issue BN2 had where the last chunk of the game really slows to a crawl and becomes a chore to complete. You have to find a bunch of viruses in the Undernet to fight, then you have to find ranked Navis to fight or do some dumb fetch quest for. The hints they give to find the next one can be ridiculously vague, and I just ended up looking up a walkthrough because I was already tired of the game at this point. It's just way too much blatant padding.

Oh also fuck Bass and Alpha. Pretty awful boss fights to end the game on. At least the ending itself is worth it.