DISCLAIMER: In order to avoid spoilers, I'll avoid speaking directly about any important events in the story, but sometimes just mentioning that "something" happened will already be a kind of minor spoiler. So read it at your own risk.

I only played through this game once, in 2010, but I remember thinking at the time that it was one of the best games I've ever played. I do remember noticing some jank at the time, but it didn't bother me then and doesn't now. I kinda grew up playing plenty of janky games, and I think as long as the core of the game is solid, the jank doesn't really matter. My disappointment on this playthrough had to do with other issues. That being said, while playing through most of the game, my mental rating kept shifting between 5 and 4.5.

I largely attribute this to the fact that the core gameplay (which consists of combat, some stealth [I'll elaborate] and role-playing) is done very well. This game advertises itself as a stealth-action RPG, where you're supposed to be able to choose how much stealth you actually want in your game. And I'd say, if you choose a full stealth path, you're probably gonna have a miserable experience. Although the devs might've intended it to be a viable option, it's really the wrong way to play this game. Not only is the jankiness of stealth gonna make it very unreliable, there are sections of the game where you are practically forced to engage in open combat, and it's gonna be really tough for you unless you're a tank build.

That being said, if you treat this game more as a shooter with some stealth elements, it ends up being more nuanced than many exemplars of this genre. I would actually describe this as "infiltration action/RPG". Because infiltration is what you do for most of the game, and the term "infiltration" doesn't necessarily exclude combat. Think of this more as a Rambo game rather than Splinter Cell or Hitman. And as a Rambo game, it has a pretty decent ranged combat, kinda rudimentary (but upgradable) melee combat, great complex level design and a huge variety of approaches you can take to each mission. It reminds me a bit of Crysis and MGSV (which I've only played a little, so might be wrong). I think what really makes a difference here though is the leveling up. Unlike many similar Action-RPGs, here every upgrade to your stats/skills feels very substantial. This makes the progression very addictive. In general the level of complexity this game offers is kinda rare to see, and makes the whole experience quite unique.

In between the action, you get to role-play, mostly through dialogues, which is pretty fun, as it usually is in such games. However, this is kinda the last good thing I can say about the game. Now I'll proceed to my criticisms, and I'll start with this exact aspect.

While the dialogue are kinda fun, they're needlessly confusing. Mass Effect got a fair bit of criticism back in the day for providing only brief summaries of dialogue options instead of the exact words your character would say. Here, you're not even given that. Instead, it's usually one word describing either the tone or the topic of what your character is gonna say. Like "Aggressive" or "Halbech", forcing you to make almost blind choices in many situations. And to make things worse, there is a timer for some reason. This seems like they stole the idea from The Walking Dead, except The Walking Dead is a game about making difficult moral choices in extreme situations. Here, most of the dialogues happen in calm environment when there's no rush. Besides, this is an RPG, not an immersive adventure game. None of the other gameplay features are designed to immerse you in the story, unlike The Walking Dead which is entirely about merging gameplay and story. [EDIT: I forgot that The Walking Dead came out two years later. But I still stand by what I said]

Speaking of the story, the actual premise and "substance" of it is kinda boring. I used quotation marks for "substance" because it doesn't really have any. It's just about some rich assholes trying to pull off a scheme that would make them richer at the cost of many lives. I guess it's a typical James Bond plot? I have only seen like one James Bond movie, so I can't really say. There is a lot of discussion about who betrayed whom, what agency they work for or what they did in the past, and none of it really means anything. The character development is pretty good, but some of their arcs remain unfinished. Perhaps this is just in my ending, but that's not really an excuse. Every ending should be equally well-written.

Even before you reach the end, some of your decisions have completely nonsensical results. For example, there is one character whom you kinda kidnap/shelter from danger. I went into this playthrough remembering her fate if I act nice to her, so I intentionally was an asshole to prevent a certain villain from using her against me. As a result, the whole time we hated each other, and then she escaped (despite my warnings that she'd be killed) and ends up getting killed. My character had no feelings towards her, but for some reason the story treats her death as a huge tragedy regardless. Even making my character bring her up later when taking revenge on my enemies.

I already mentioned how you often don't know what you're choosing in dialogues. This also extends to gameplay sometimes. In the final mission you learn that one of your associates had betrayed you, and later there's a junction, where one of the villains says "you can either go after her or after us, make your choice". I went after her because I can't stand betrayal, but as I reached her, turns out they had tied her to a bomb and she would die if I DIDN'T come, and the only choice I have is to either save her or not. Which means, if I didn't want to save her, there's not even a resolution to our relationship. If I chose to go after the villain, she would just disappear from the story without any closure.

In fact, in that last mission you also learn of another character's secret role in something they'd not told you about. And you can either choose to escort her out or let her escape on her own. Again, not really a resolution. You don't even know whether she escaped or not, and you can't confront her about lying to you.

Speaking of the last mission, it's pretty terrible. You get to fight several bosses in it, and boss fights in general are pretty bad in this game, but these are extremely annoying. Especially the helicopter and the guy who spams you with grenades, both of which can one-hit-kill you. Honestly, it was the last mission combined with the terrible character arc resolutions and my dissatisfaction from some mistakenly (due to vagueness) chosen decisions that finally made me lower the rating to 4.

Before I wrap this up, I wanna comment on the presentation. The soundtrack is pretty forgettable, nothing to say here. But the graphics are really weird. They look quite pretty from a distance, but once you look closer, a lot of the textures have these weird distortions, almost like AI-generated images. In fact, there are some Soviet propaganda posters in this game that are real historical posters, except for some reason they're also distorted and the words on them are complete gibberish in the style that AI-generation produces. And I checked, all my graphics settings were set to max, but a lot of textures are really blurry and distorted. It's especially bad with backgrounds, like city panoramas you can see out the window, with very blurry textures on the buildings and very low-res skyboxes.

At the end of the day though, I still had a lot of fun with this game. It is extremely addictive, and out of my 11.7 hours with it, more than half was binged. Which is something I almost never do with any game. There is this loop that once you finish a mission, you want to check your emails, buy new gear, upgrade yourself, which in turn makes you wanna check out how that gear and upgrades are gonna perform, as well as see how other characters are gonna respond to your emails (which only happens between missions), so you end up jumping into another mission, and it repeats. I feel like I might still play through this game again at some point, but it definitely loses its spot on my top-100 list.