I played this for around 30 hours over the last week and I think I'm done with it. It's not bad (I'd give it a 6/10), but it fails to deliver on almost everything. Quick review:
+ Great core combat. The only reason I put so much time into the game is because the combat feels so good.
+ I like the expanded moveset. Double/triple jumps, throwing knives, super powers, sprint + slide, etc.
+ Beautiful art and graphics. One of the best looking games I've ever seen.
= PvP. I absolutely hate FPS with huge teams, huge maps, and vehicles, so all of the 6v6 playlists are total trash imo. I liked both of the 3v3 playlists, but I guess they are only playable for a limited time since neither of them are available right now. Stupid.
= Weapon variety isn't great. It's pretty much the bog-standard FPS loadout. They're all fun to use, but it would have been nice if there were some more unique weapons.
- Mission design is extremely repetitive. I think every single one of the story missions plays out the same: you run into a large room, have your orb scan/hack/unlock something, and fight off a wave or three of enemies before moving on to the next area. The stage designs are fairly varied, though, so at least most of the combat arenas are different from one another.
- Patrol missions. They're there to try and get you to explore each of the planets (which there aren't enough of), but there's nothing interesting to find on them. All you have are a bunch of simplistic quests that are mind numbingly boring to complete.
- Strikes. These are missions that were designed for three players, with larger groups of enemies and a boss fight at the end. The problem is that there are only like five of them, and you have to play each of them over and over if you want better equipment (from the Vanguard merchants or loot drops). It gets old very fast.
- Bosses are pure damage sponges. They each have maybe two easily avoidable attacks and they walk back and forth through the arena the entire time. Once they take a certain amount of damage, a bunch of minions will spawn. After clearing them out, you can go back to whittling down the boss' enormous health bar. To cap it all off, the bosses don't even drop any loot once killed. They drop some item that you turn in to a merchant for 200 credits, which is pretty much worthless.
- Matchmaking/lobbies are the worst I've ever seen for an online/loot-based game. Want to do the weekly Strike or Nightfall missions, but don't have any friends who are online and appropriately geared for them? Tough shit. Those missions don't have matchmaking and you can't join random lobbies, so go search on some message boards for people who want to play. Phantasy Star Online, a 15~ years old game, is far more advanced than this. Pathetic.
- The story is throwaway. Worst of all, you can't skip any of the cutscenes (at least there are only a few of them).
- Loot distribution is pretty bad in general. In PvE, you're lucky if you get one or two rare items after each Strike or story mission. Enemies hardly ever drop anything but the occasional uncommon item, and I've never seen them drop a legendary or exotic. The higher level weekly events and Raid should give better items, but as I said, only people with a dedicated group can do them. You can also get one or two items (usually rares once you're level 20+) after each PvP battle, but it's totally random. I've seen the best player on a team get nothing while a guy who had a 0.3 KDR get a legendary. Lol.
That's a lot of negatives and only a few positives, but I still feel like giving the game a good score simply because the combat makes it fun to play, even if it has a ton of problems. Maybe it will get better after patches/expansions/DLC, but as it is, I wouldn't recommend it. Personally, I'm probably going to trade it in at Best Buy so I can get The Evil Within for $5~ next month.
