Honestly way better than people make it out to be. While the story is not great, the hacker twist on the gta formula works surprisingly well, with the quick hacks being very fun to use and making so that you have multiple ways to approach each combat scenario. The city is also pretty big and detailed, though the driving sucks ass. One thing I don't see mentioned enough is how insane the profiler is and just how much it makes the city feel like a lived in place. Seriously the profiler is genuinely revolutionary stuff, it makes the city feel so incredibly lived in and real, with every person being unique and having a place in the city and not being just a generic citizen or whatever. Those few lines of randomly generated text makes for one of the most lived in worlds I've ever played in.