If you are someone that never got caught up in the launch ordeal, the backlash, or is willing to look past it, then I can tell you, there is a decent game here with a good story and interesting side characters. It's a very above average game and that's just fine.

• To put it simply, it's a comic book style revenge story dealing with some pretty dark themes. It leads into dealing with the criminal underworld and discovering huge invasions of privacy, which is pretty relevant today.
  
• I like Aiden Pearce as a character, he is someone that is recovering from tragedy due to his own actions but has the power to take vengeance. He is very reminiscent to Altair, or Connor from the Assassins Creed series. Stoic, serious and he is always straight to the point, with paranoia, trust and control issues all in tow.
  
• Supporting characters are pretty unique and interesting. I just don't think they got enough screen time and all of them could of benefit from either having there own side missions or just in general being more involved in the story.

• Free running feels like a very basic version of the Assassins Creed system with your ability to mantle over waist height objects and climb up small walls. It does a good job of keeping a flow in chase sequences but I feel it lacks verticality.
  
• Stealth was usually my go to and the game gives you options on ways to utilise it. Track targets using cameras and then make plans to use hacking skills to take them out, sneak around, distract them with lures and non-lethally take them down with your expandable baton or just kill them with a suppressed pistol.
  
• Open combat works works like your standard 3rd person action game with it's cover system, just with the added ability of being able to hack objects around you to cause explosions, blackouts or jam reinforcement coms. The guns feel okay to use with a decent variety available, with a slow-mo "focus" ability.
  
• Obviously "hacking" is a big part of the game-play and the world itself. It does a good job of making everything feel like it's connected and integrating it into how you want to play. Using it to interact with other characters, utilising it in stealth, combat and also while driving, but most objects can only be used in one way making it feel very static.
  
• Driving in this game to me is the worst aspect. Cars, motorbikes, boats and trucks just feel bad with poor handling and feeling like they are made of plastic. As your primary way to get around and the amount of vehicles on offer it's a wonder why it feels like it was the least thing worked on.
  
• The game hosts somewhat of a reputation system but unfortunately it's not real well implemented and it's easy to forget it's even there. Generally it just takes a hit if you kill innocent people or goes in a positive direction when you save NPC's from an ongoing crime.
  
• All of your abilities can be affected by skill points earnt through leveling, which you'll gain by just playing the game. Some skills are locked behind doing side content or story missions and points can be used to unlock new hacks, crafting items or passive skills.
  
• There is a crafting system, where you can make one-time use hacks, lures and grenades with materials found in world but you can also just find/buy those items as well.

Questing/side content

• The city is filled with named NPC's which fill up the background and make the city feel a bit more alive. They can also provide some form of game-play purpose like being able to steal money from but majority of them are there for a bit of a laugh by reading the information that pops up in their profile.
  
• The classic Ubisoft open world where it just fills the map up with a bunch collectables, points of interest and basic short form side content all of which can be revealed on the map via hacking random npc's or unlocking the local CTOS tower.
  
• I'm a disappointed in the side missions in the game and I do wish they had more focus on individual characters rather then what we got with the investigations and trail following tasks. They offered interest at first only for them to kind of fizzle out and become forgettable.
  
• There is a multiplayer element to this game that I didn't get to experience outside of a tutorial.

Difficulty

• It's pretty standard when it comes to difficulty and you'll find nothing that makes it stand out.

Length

• The story will take you around 10 hours with 41 missions but if you want to go for that 100% which I'm not sure you will have much luck with considering multiplayer adds towards it, it could easily take 60-80.

Visuals

• By no means bad and is probably what you expect. The city during the night hits the feeling on the head perfectly, it suits the tone, atmosphere and feels amazing just walking the streets at night in the rain. Which is in contrast to Chicago during the day where it just feels, fine.
  
• The character models do well enough to portray the emotion in the characters with detail and I love the design of the main cast. NPC's lack a bit of fidelity across the board and can be often copy and pasted,

Audio

• The OST in this game is absolutely solid, bringing pumping percussion beats or the more atmospheric synth as a backdrop. It just needed to be used more often with a bit more variety.
  
• You have the in-game radio as well, that play's while in a vehicle or you can load it up anywhere via your phone. You unlock more songs by hacking random NPC's which is a neat idea. There is a few notable songs but for the most part it just didn't interest me and I'd much rather listen to the OST or the ambience.
  
• Voice acting does well to convey emotion and in general adds to the performance of the characters. I especially like Aiden. You can tell Aiden tries to come across serious and monotone as possible a lot of the time to give the illusion he is always in control and has no weaknesses, only for it to break when his emotions get the better of him.

Performance and Bugs.

• There is one thing that's hard not to mention and will absolutely steal your focus, Aiden's coat. It just kind of goes off it's head. There is a mod that you can download to fix this issue and I heavily recommend it.
  
• It runs great on modern hardware as far as I can tell. Roughly 200fps consistently.
  
• No game-breaking bugs. Mainly just clipping issues and rendering distance.

My system at the time
Operating System: Windows 11
Processor: 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900K 3.20 GHz
RAM: 64.0 GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super.
Resolution: 3440x1440
Installed on an M.2 SSD

Doesn't work... I hate when games run through a third party application. (Ubisoft Connect) when starting you'll be asked for an activation key which you do not have... Then you just close it.. It's on sale right now as of 05/14/2024 and it's still not worth the 5 dollars.

For a strange reason, almost no Ubisoft game has integrated Steam achievements. Please, add achievements.