It's hard to make conversations between characters captivating, and I felt like the game wasn't able to. When the gameplay loop is mostly jump from dialog scene to dialog scene, it just kept me losing my interest.

The production values are high and the environments are very well realized, some of the themes are fascinating, but were also covered in the previous game. The combat and stealth are pretty good although hampered by a weird decision to limit everything by the battery cooldown. It's just that the story could not grab me.

I find it very hard to keep engaged on narrative focused games, even when the story is good. I'm never sure when these types of games click with me. I think the fact that Soma never takes the control from you, and every action requires some form of interactive motion (e.g. doors are not opened with a button, but with a motion, levers are the same, etc.) help a lot to keep my attention. The art direction and sound design create the perfect atmosphere.

The stalking sections are an obvious negative point, but they are so short, and everything else is so great, that it didn't really bother in the end.

Very good and original idea, extremely well executed. Just thought the progression gets really slow, so the game gets very repetitive halfway through, and I ended up abandoning even though I was very interested in where the story was going.

I think the progression is stalled by two major reasons. First, is the 15 minutes time limiter that completely breaks the pacing for no reason at all (I think it even goes against the story that the game is trying to tell. I would be very happy with my employer if I had 15 minutes working days). Secondly, is just the overall progression of equipments and ranks. I understand that dumping too much information to the player may be overwhelming, but in this case it's just too slow, and you end up repeating the same ships without much progress.

It is a good idea from the narrative point of view, but the gamification of real jobs is very hard to nail down in a way that fits the storytelling, or is fun and/or engaging  (papers please may be the only successful example I can think of). Even with a large degree of poetic license and suspension of disbelief, what you do here is essentially a sequence of quick time events (where you just have to press a specific button at the right time), which can be fun in some sequences (in action games for example), but when it's all you do for 8h, it's hard to keep me engaged.

The story brings some fascinating topics in how mainstream media is able to shape the way news are presented while also maintaining "impartiality", however the comedy is so slapstick, that I felt it was a little too much, and took me away from some of the more interesting topics that it was trying to convey.

Great presentation and a huge step up in production values. The art style is super charming and the soundtrack is very enjoyable. However, mechanicanically, most of the additions make the game worse.

There is no punishment for landing a wrong spin, so you just hold L2 or R2 all the time for free points and multipliers. The grabs are a little awkward to pull off since you have to move your thumb from the A button, which is constantly being used for landings, so you basically just end up using them when you are forced to. The wall rides combined with some weird physiscs are just a gamble in which angle you are going to land and come out.

It still is a very fun and satisfying game, but its just worse in almost every single way than the previous entries.

Fantastic gameplay when web swinging through the city, really well-made cut-scenes, great voice acting and production values. Technically, the game felt extremely polished, with some impressive graphics and very good performance for what it proposes.

Unfortunately, the game relies too much on a very unclear combat gameplay. The dynamics are very similar to the Batman Arkham series, however in that game, even though I don't think the combat is very good (it feels like a sequence of glorified quick time events), at least it was extremely clear and precise in what you are doing and the way the enemies would react. Here is just a gamble if my dodge would actually work as intended, or if an enemy on the ground would be able to punch me when I'm in the air. Also, there are some completely useless RPG mechanics where you gain 10% attack after some levels, but by the mid-point of the game the enemies needed the same amount of punches from the beginning?

In the end, the problem is that maybe 80% of missions were heavily relying on combat, which is expected in a Spider-Man game, but it was just not good enough... On top of that you have some really frequent missions where you control MJ that are not enjoyable at all, and some puzzle sequences that are not challenging nor fun to solve (I know you can skip those, but why even bother including them if you are not confident enough in them when you give the player an option to skip it). 

I have some other minor complaints about the open world structure and mechanics of AAA games that are much present here, but I guess that's what most of the audience of these types of blockbuster experiences expects, so the studios feel compelled to include, and it's hard to blame them.

Impeccable art direction and sound design. Exemplified by the boss fight with that worm machine, when you break its shield the music and sound effects stop and the camera focus on the blast that the enemy is about to take. These moments happen often throughout the game, and it shows a very strong direction where every element communicates perfectly with each other. From Soft has been killing it with its "cinematography" (I don't even know if there is an equivalent term for this in video-games) where lightning, composition, camera angles, environments are constructed/chosen with such care that makes everything so pretty, be it during gameplay and specially during cut-scenes. It's been happening for every game of theirs, and it's so nice to see this also translated very well in a sci-fi/high tech/industrial setting. 

Mechanically, the game creates a fantastic feeling of what I imagine would be to control a mech. In terms of game design, I appreciate the mission based structure, but I would have preferred a little bit more of exploration or more engaging normal enemies (maybe in a structure more similar to DMC or Bayonetta with small arenas where you fight a group of enemies). I think this would also have benefited NG+ and NG++ by mixing stronger/late-game enemies in earlier mission. Despite this, NG+ and NG++ are a step up from their previous games with different paths and added mission (and with its meta-commentary of you as the player knowing the story, and the game knowing that you know the story), which hopefully continue in their future games.

I think what makes this good was already in Divinity 2, and the problems with that game are also here, so there is not a significant improvement between these two.

The philosophy of focusing on a gigantic world with millions of mechanics is risky, and is paying off for Larian critically and commercially (and rightfully so, these games are excellent).
But in the end, the simpler mechanics all feel extremely janky. I had the expectation that from Divinity 2 to this, they could have delivered more polished mechanics in combat and interactions with through the world, but they are worse. During Act 3 I was a little burnt out from the game due to bloated encounters with an absurd amount of enemies and janky navigation through trap filled locations.

But, the game is very very good, and I'm happy for the developers with the absurd success, which I think it should have come before with Divinity 2.

Hard to imagine how do you follow up on DMC 3. DMC 4 is a very very good game by itself, but when compared to 3, it's just worse in every way, unfortunately. Nero is fun to play, but not as fun as Dante in DMC3. Dante is fun to play, but not as fun as Dante in DMC3. 

I felt like a few of the enemy designs were better balanced for Nero with his grappling and grabbing mechanics than for Dante.

The level design was just way below what we see in DMC 3. Some encounters are just bad due to weird level geometry and camera placement.
There are very confusing moments on where you are supposed to go, some extremely awkward sequences with the grappling hook, the dice sections that only serve to break the pace if you make a mistake and the Dante missions felt like they didn't have much thought put on them.

I think DMC 5 has some of the same issues than 4, but I would much rather replay that than 4. I guess the list would be 3>1>5>4.

I think they should embrace its arcade style game design influences a little more. The new game plus just carries on the runes, it should also carry the store upgrades. There are clearly two games to be played here, one where you are basically gathering all collectibles and upgrades and getting to know everything about the levels, and another play through where you are fully upgraded and wants to be as effective as possible in the missions. That teleportation ability should have minimal cooldown. There are some intermission sessions between levels in the boat that add nothing to the game, and there are too many things to read that also don't add much. Even though the art direction is superb, I think the better graphics create some busier visuals that make it hard to spot some enemies or items compared to the first.

Overall it's excellent, and is totally recommended, but I don't think it is better than the first.