izigame.me

TLDR;
Wait for it to go on sale or get it on gamepass, just don't pay full price. Very repetitive, a lot of highs, a lot of lows, messy pacing, but enough interesting things to keep you going. Paints both communism and capitalism as bad if you cared about that. There's actually quite a bit of robot girls.
Beat the game on normal in a little over 13 hours. See literally no reason to replay unless I want to just look at stuff. You can easily extend this time by really exploring the overworld. If you find value or enjoyment in the overworld gameplay loop, then you'll probably enjoy going through it. I however, did not find value.
The good:
- The music is definitely the highlight. At its best its really good and exciting, at its worst its still interesting. Which is better than forgettable imo
- Very well optimized. I had very steady frames and only encountered a single glitch that required a restart. But that only happened once and I was jumping in a spot I wan't meant to.
- Great setting and visuals
- Story is decent, nothing mindblowing. There are a few things that don't make sense, but there is still setup and payoff within the narrative
- I felt the difficulty was fine throughout. I was never on autopilot when in combat and would still find myself making mistakes and dying. There are certain perks that are a must have and you definitely feel the progression. I found myself wanting to avoid combat near the start, but not at all near the end.
- I liked every side character/robot. There was a certain red robot that I wish had more screen time. It was fun whenever I saw it. I've seen that some people HATED this character, but I personally like it.
- There is a mission/dungeon with what I thought was a 10/10 subplot in the readable records and audio recordings.
- Very small and isolated moments throughout the I absolutely loved. Like some character interaction or world building moments.

The bad:
- Probably the biggest issue: pacing pacing pacing. It made no sense. They tried to do what Bioshock Infinite did with seeing columbia all nice and pretty and happy before things go wrong, except not as well both thematically and in execution. You sit through what is basically an interactive cut scene with really on-the-nose exposition and a lot of NPCs going "wow, it sure is amazing that we have such amazing science in thanks to and their that recently came out." After this you, you arrive in the open world to go to the first mission/dungeon. I then spent 4 hours on this first mission. Then back to the open world for 10 minutes to get to the next story mission. Then another 2-3 hours on that. Then everything gets shorter on average afterwards. The first half of the game has so many puzzles that you would think it was a puzzle game first before a FPS, but then the last half of the game has literally no puzzles so idk. Its a mess.
- The game has an "open world" tag, but is only "open world" in that there is an overworld that you can explore (kinda). However, there isn't really anything to do other than collect weapon blueprints and kill robots. The overworld only stands as a set piece to get from story mission to story mission. I spent maybe an 1.5 hours total in the overworld, and I was really trying to find interesting things to do. There was a point in which I wanted to travel to get an upgrade for a weapon only to find that the entire section of the map was cut off and I had to progress through the story to open it. There wasn't even any indication that it opened when it did. And by the time it did, I didn't need the upgrade. The combat cycle for the overworld can just be ignored. There are sometimes just too many enemies in a given location. Like, you will scan the area and there's 30 things on your screen with lines connecting them and then they just keep adding more and more as you progress through the story.
- There are lines of dialog that are just bad. Not even like "oh that could have been better". More like "I wish i didn't have to listen to that". You kinda get used to it though. Or maybe it just improved a bit over the course of the game
- Voice acting is good, but the direction is often terrible. The MC will say a line and deliver it well, but in a tone and inflection that does not fit the situation at all. I found this happening a lot. I'm told the Russian VA is the best option.
- Unbelievably repetitive. Very little enemy variety. Only (one)? dead soldier model. You will spend hours collecting things to put into other things to open doors and then open some variation of three lock types on a door to again collect things to open another door and then talk to an unmoving dead body. Each time you fight some amount of the 6 or so enemy types. (eidt:I looked this up, there are 9 normal types. 3 have variants. The rest are boss types. You see one type way more than the rest). The game also tries to be cute with it by having the MC say something sarcastic like "Wow, another lock on the door. Who would have seen that coming?", or "Yeah, of course I have to go collect more capsules. What else could it have possibly been?". As though that makes this type of game design excusable.
- The first boss fight blew my mind away. Like probably the best moment of the game. Then all other boss fights are boring.

EDIT:
lmao people got heated in the comments, which is fine. At the end of the day, it is a negative review for something they may have enjoyed. In regards to my point on the price of the game; It's not a matter of being able to afford it, but rather that the game is simply not worth full price. If you are ok with paying $60 for 10-12 hours of content, go for it. If you can find it cheaper, you should probably do that instead. If the asking price was lower, it would arguably decrease quality expectations and the game's issues would be more excusable. But instead, they want a AAA price so I will expect AAA quality and will judge it so. My other criticisms still stand, regardless of the price. I don't hate the game, I just don't recommend it as it currently is. Also I've never bought any COD of FIFA games. I don't know where that point's coming form. Cheers