This game is so sick.
The story is definitely a lot less minimalist than the past entries; More along the lines of an ace combat game. Not something that bothers me, I really liked it.
This game just looks really great. Cool environments to zip around in, and very nice mech customization. I do miss the stabilizers from 4 though.
It could use more parts overall. The machine guns suck again. There arent any regular guns for the shoulders. No weapon arms. Only 2 quad legs. What's there is cool though.
I mostly like all the gameplay changes. Different generators matter more than just weight and energy output. High power explosive weapons are balanced out by recoil. I'm not very into the stagger system. I don't really understand it too well. Like, you mostly do chip damage until you stagger the enemy? I dunno. And getting staggered is really annoying so it makes me not want to build light ACs. Your movement is more dictated by your boosters instead of your legs, which makes it easier to just pick legs you think look cool. You now never have any issue turning or aiming. And obviously that feels fine, but its a pretty big change for the series. That, along with never really needing to worry about funds or ammo kind of take away from the series identity, but for me they aren't changes that make the game less fun. Oh, and they added estus flasks for some reason. Don't really get the point in this game, but whatever.
At the start of chapter 3 you get new shotguns. My build became just wielding 4 shotguns. It's very stupid and fun and also just completely busted. I did not struggle with any encounter for the rest of the game. Like, I would deliberately hold back during some fights because I would kill things so fast I'd miss their dialogue lol. That also isnt something that bothered me. I like easy games. Actually they did funnily toss bonewheel skeletons into this game, and they gave me a hard time as usual lol.
Multiplayer is really underwhelming. Theres no quick play, so you have to join lobbies. And there is no match variety beyond 1v1 or 3v3. Also no co-op, which would have been really cool.

I was worried I wasn't going to like the story at first. Mostly because I thought Handler Walter was really boring, but it scopes out a lot. I thought all the other characters you meet were very fun. Their descriptions in the arena help contextualize them and fill out the story a bit more. But it would be nice if you got some extra dialogue from them during the fights.
Only got one ending so far but I'm sure I'll eventually go back and get more.
My main nitpicks are that the soundtrack is boring, it only has 1 loading screen and its the worst in the series.