Despite the fact that my resultant assessment is a positive one, the game has its share of major flaws. I will start with those as I find more merit reading about the negative aspects of a title rather than facing myriads of pointless praises. That is unless the positive feedback is supported with evidence or details, which is sadly rarely the case.

1. The game uses the Vulkan api which unfortunately doesn't bode well with Steam overlay. That means no screenshots, no build-in browser, no achievements preview will be available to you during playtime. If you try to manually open the overlay you will see some grey empty rectangles and maybe some unreadable text within and that's all. View these discussions for details:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/612880/discussions/0/1479856439029553782/
https://bethesda.net/community/topic/117934/steam-overlay-not-working/10?language%5B%5D=en
Sadly, 3 years after the launch this is still the case.

2. The collision detection being applied when traversing complex terrain, such as bent and busted pipelines or broken woodwork and furniture within buildings, is severely flawed and will give you headaches while trying to keep a steady pace wading over or by them. You will find yourself jumping way over some obstacles only to be blocked by "an invisible wall" or unable to move while crouching in a seemingly unhindered path, only because a few pixels of a tiny piece of pipeline may be blocking part of your hero's hitbox!

3. The numerous collecticles (Gold, Cards, Concepts, Toys, etc) are not just pointless, unless you are aiming for the respective achievements, but actively destroy your overall gameplay experience with their erratic key-bindings and modal pop-ups. Once you pick up one of the accursed collectibles you must resist your innate human curiosity to see what exactly it is that you hoarded this time, in your invisible magical Santa Claus bag. If you dare to take a peek you will need different key to view it (J by default I think) and sometimes another (E) to close the dialog or other times combination of J and ESC to rid of the unnecessarily complex cascade of menus. What the hell you ask yourself.. It's like Witcher trying to ready a potion or oil a sword all over again. Ridiculous annoyance and hindrance that you wouldn't expect in a prestigious AAA title. My advice, unless you're OCD ridden with gathering everything you can find, just skip those pesky collecticles altogether.

4. And speaking of pesky, annoying and hindrances, behold the behemoth of them all... the atrocious in-game navigation or better lack of any thereof. If you are looking for an overlay minimap or hints for any nearby collectibles well you are out of luck. The combination of intricate and rather uniform levels (due to the theme of urban wasteland that you constantly encounter) and their usually single-way-out design by putting "clever" obstacles in alternative routes, guarantee that you will often need to refer to a navigation companion of sorts. The only thing available is the objective marker hint activated by hitting G by default and a horrendous minimap that you have to adjust constantly its zoom and pan, which is ONLY available in the fullscreen modal menu mode when hitting the J key. The map shows only "points of interest" and a general outline of the immediate area in the same elevation as you. As you going up and down stairs you will have to constantly pause the game to bring up the mission map, scrolling in and out and panning in every direction to get the correct bearings of where you are and where you might want to go; you're never certain until you memorize every area overview for the different elevation levels. To be fair, the in-game hints include flashing ammunition so at least you're always loaded.

5. The "stealthy" aspect of the game is severely flawed, but that was the same with its predecessor, so it's not a "new colossus" only thing. You don't have any clear visual or auditory indication of the enemies location or their perception range apart from the actual visual on them (but that means it's almost always too late as they spot you rather fast). You might say that it's normal as this game was mostly intended to be played guns blazing rather than crawling in the shadows. Then again why the heavy design & development investment on suppressor weapon upgrades and upgradable skills for silent kills with throwing hatchets. Wasted development time that could be well invested on better navigation mechanics instead.

So, after all this flak why the positive review? Well it's a hell of an action-packed first-person shooter and I really love the genre. It's like playing DOOM with nazis instead of demons (well is there a real difference anyway)! Nevertheless, I'd rather not pay the full price for it if possible, so just add it to your wishlist and wait for a good discount.

Despite the fact that my resultant assessment is a positive one, the game has its share of major flaws. I will start with those as I find more merit reading about the negative aspects of a title rather than facing myriads of pointless praises. That is unless the positive feedback is supported with evidence or details, which is sadly rarely the case. 1. The game uses the Vulkan api which unfortunately doesn't bode well with Steam overlay. That means no screenshots, no build-in browser, no achievements preview will be available to you during playtime. If you try to manually open the overlay you will see some grey empty rectangles and maybe some unreadable text within and that's all. View these discussions for details: https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/612880/discussions/0/1479856439029553782/ https://bethesda.net/community/topic/117934/steam-overlay-not-working/10?language%5B%5D=en Sadly, 3 years after the launch this is still the case. 2. The collision detection being applied when traversing complex terrain, such as bent and busted pipelines or broken woodwork and furniture within buildings, is severely flawed and will give you headaches while trying to keep a steady pace wading over or by them. You will find yourself jumping way over some obstacles only to be blocked by "an invisible wall" or unable to move while crouching in a seemingly unhindered path, only because a few pixels of a tiny piece of pipeline may be blocking part of your hero's hitbox! 3. The numerous collecticles (Gold, Cards, Concepts, Toys, etc) are not just pointless, unless you are aiming for the respective achievements, but actively destroy your overall gameplay experience with their erratic key-bindings and modal pop-ups. Once you pick up one of the accursed collectibles you must resist your innate human curiosity to see what exactly it is that you hoarded this time, in your invisible magical Santa Claus bag. If you dare to take a peek you will need different key to view it (J by default I think) and sometimes another (E) to close the dialog or other times combination of J and ESC to rid of the unnecessarily complex cascade of menus. What the hell you ask yourself.. It's like Witcher trying to ready a potion or oil a sword all over again. Ridiculous annoyance and hindrance that you wouldn't expect in a prestigious AAA title. My advice, unless you're OCD ridden with gathering everything you can find, just skip those pesky collecticles altogether. 4. And speaking of pesky, annoying and hindrances, behold the behemoth of them all... the atrocious in-game navigation or better lack of any thereof. If you are looking for an overlay minimap or hints for any nearby collectibles well you are out of luck. The combination of intricate and rather uniform levels (due to the theme of urban wasteland that you constantly encounter) and their usually single-way-out design by putting "clever" obstacles in alternative routes, guarantee that you will often need to refer to a navigation companion of sorts. The only thing available is the objective marker hint activated by hitting G by default and a horrendous minimap that you have to adjust constantly its zoom and pan, which is ONLY available in the fullscreen modal menu mode when hitting the J key. The map shows only "points of interest" and a general outline of the immediate area in the same elevation as you. As you going up and down stairs you will have to constantly pause the game to bring up the mission map, scrolling in and out and panning in every direction to get the correct bearings of where you are and where you might want to go; you're never certain until you memorize every area overview for the different elevation levels. To be fair, the in-game hints include flashing ammunition so at least you're always loaded. 5. The "stealthy" aspect of the game is severely flawed, but that was the same with its predecessor, so it's not a "new colossus" only thing. You don't have any clear visual or auditory indication of the enemies location or their perception range apart from the actual visual on them (but that means it's almost always too late as they spot you rather fast). You might say that it's normal as this game was mostly intended to be played guns blazing rather than crawling in the shadows. Then again why the heavy design & development investment on suppressor weapon upgrades and upgradable skills for silent kills with throwing hatchets. Wasted development time that could be well invested on better navigation mechanics instead. So, after all this flak why the positive review? Well it's a hell of an action-packed first-person shooter and I really love the genre. It's like playing DOOM with nazis instead of demons (well is there a real difference anyway)! Nevertheless, I'd rather not pay the full price for it if possible, so just add it to your wishlist and wait for a good discount.