It's not a bad game per-se. It's actually fairly decent if you don't know just how good SE4 can be when you take the time to learn how to play it on max difficulty.

It's just sad to see such a great franchise dumb itself down to pander to a wider audience and ruin what made the previous games so good in the process.

Even the max difficulty on this game tells you exactly where to aim. It doesn't show the reticle in the center, but both the wind and gravity indicators are lined up exactly where your shot will land. 1000m shots in this game are less satisfying than 300m shots in SE4.

Sniper Elite 5 is fun, but it's nowhere near worth $60. The only reason I bought this game is because it goes on sale for $12 on a semi-regular basis. Still, it's a fun time with friends. The invasion mode is incredibly tense and shows how easily games can be made tense and interesting without needing constant action.

The biggest problem is the map design. The maps are HUGE. They feel a lot bigger than the maps in Sniper Elite 4 and this causes the missions to drag on. The average mission WILL take more than an hour. Easily over 2 hours if you plan on playing stealthy. And because the maps are wide open, a single firefight usually lights up the entire map. This makes playing loud less fun.

This game also features the usual Sniper Elite jank: Enemies can often see through dense foliage and other fully-opaque surfaces, so often times you'll be hiding behind a piece of cover only to discover that it wasn't mapped properly and the enemies can see you as plain as day. Speaking of things not being mapped properly: there are many sections in the game where you can hang from ledges, but the developers seemingly forgot to allow the player to drop down off of them, even when there's clearly ground less than a foot below you and it's obvious that you were supposed to be able to climb up and down that way. Lots of low walls can mantled, but some can't for seemingly no reason.

The new gunsmithing idea seems neat and I like the idea that you can now have different variants of the same gun (like unscoped Kar98s for the average infantry and suppressed SMGs for the snipers), but the system doesn't really feel like it adds much to the game and it feels like the system was added purely because other games at the time were doing weapon customization. Honestly, the development time could have been much better spent adding new enemy types (like adding medics, who would always carry medical supplies and be able to revive incapacitated enemies, but penalize the player's points if killed).

The non-lethal takedown option is cool, but I would love to see it expanded on beyond just a second melee takedown button. I think adding a Metal Gear Solid style holdup system that would let you take prisoners could be pretty cool.

This game is an improvement on Sniper Elite 4 and it's a fun experience, but half of the game feels uncooked. I hope Rebellion will take their time with the next game. I hope they reel back some of the unnecessary parts of the game and focus on the unique blend of stealth infiltration and sniper action that the series is known for. I love Sniper Elite and hope it does well. At least Rebellion's not selling anime laser guns and Nicki Minaj skins like Call of Duty

If you enjoy previous Sniper Elite titles I think this is worth a shot and a play through. It’s more of the same game mechanics, but I feel like they know what we enjoyed about Sniper Elite and ran with it which I appreciate. There are small tweaks here in there, but generally it plays like all the other Sniper Elite games which I appreciate. Graphics are great for its time and it has that bullet cam that is uniquely a part of the Sniper Elite games. Replay value is high as there is different ways to tackle the levels and the enemies. Multiplayer is fun and challenging. I think this is a great addition to the franchise and worth at least one full playthrough. You might find you’ll want to replay levels to come at them different ways. Definitely recommend.