Fascinating concepts with middling execution. Game feel is especially stilted in this one, commands are all over the map in terms of feasibility, and bosses are mostly brick walls. Narratively the game struggles to figure out what its characters are meant to be or do until the end, hinging the primary conflict off of a phony friendship instead of the actual interesting material with ancillary characters.

Deeply flawed, yes, but also consistently inventive for a series five entries in. This easily could have been a reboot of kinds in how drastic the changes in gameplay are (many of which would be refined in future entries), but it roots itself back to the established canon anyway, providing a larger dramatic scope for the series to operate within moving forward. And said ending features some of the most compelling drama the series has ever seen, hinting at an even better story about the abuses of authority and being an adult, if the game took the time to extrapolate it. Honestly it's pretty genius to make a prequel a story about responsibility, where we can immediately feel the failure to claim it in the existing titles. Basically what I'm saying is that we need more video game tragedies.