My most recent playthrough made me realize that I had been too hard on this game before when comparing it to Human Revolution.

In terms of the actual gameplay it improved more on Human Revolution than I gave it credit for. Both the stealth and gunplay are much improved and it definitely feels like it gives you many more options to get through areas.

I wish I could say the same about the story but Square's meddling in the development of the game made sure that it ended up being weaker overall even if there are definitely spots that I thought were much improved over HR. I thought the side missions were much more interesting and much more fleshed out than before with more thought put into the story of each of them with and with multiple of them having different stages that occur over your different visits to Prague that all come together at the end of the game where you can see the different people Jensen helped throughout the game joined together under a singular cause. One side mission "thread" I would like to single out is the Harvester missions. Those on their own are much more fleshed out than anything in HR and are some of the best parts of the game.

The main story is a step down from HR but in general is still interesting enough to stay engaging until it completely drops the ball with the ending where instead of having anything actually important happen it just zooms in on a tv while the news tells you about all the things you did.