Would I buy it again at release price? No.
Is it good? Yes.
Is it great? No.
Does it have problems? Yes.
There's so much stacked against you if you choose to go without taking hacking levels that it can be quite detrimental. PDA's with security codes are often in obscure locations or on the dead/unconcious bodies of guards. Why can't you pickpocket them? Are "stealth" and "theft" not best of friends? Or tap into their PDA via wireless connection? Your body is a walking heap of technological marvels but you can't crack into someone's bluetooth? There are times and situations where I do feel that I'm being punished for not falling within the designer's predictions.
Why can I run a city block with all of these bionic enhancements without a recharge, but I fork out a whole cell of energy just to take out one guy, the same amount of juice required to make me completely invisible for 3 seconds? Considering that there is at times the need/option to break glass in order to progress, why do you need to whip out your (hopefully silenced) firearm in order to do so? A flick of the wrist would suffice, something that would have been extremely useful if you needed to get one enemy's attention from cover (like the wall tap from MG).
Yes, it's a very story centric game, I get that. Being published by SE that's actually something I expect. Up until the events in Montreal, about half way through the game (?) the pacing seems deliberately slow, sparse and just not that intriguing, tendencies to guess ahead aside. Quest challenges and rewards are very isolated from the overall experience, which wouldn't bother me if the game wasn't such a linear experience overall. Overall there was little character development with the notable exception of Faridah Malik, pilot and secondary character to the entire story. Even though her scenes are limited and aren't necessarily needed to drive the story forward, she was still the most interesting. Jensen being an emotionless statue of a lead whose voice actor gargle's the same gravel as Christian Bale while embarking on missions that cover a range of ethical issues with all the emotional range of my toaster doesn't help either.
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of good there. At first it felt like I was playing a true spiritual successor to Shadowrun (the network icons helped quite a bit, devil in the details) and that really excited me. Then it started to feel like Ghost in the Shell with the thermo-optic camo, and the conspiracies within conspiracies plot loops. But I can't help but suspect that there's the chance that the market has been so sorely starved for a well executed stealth game/sequel (and it is well executed mind, not great but well) that there might be some blinding between what is there and what we wish it was.
Honestly the only things that ever kept me going was the hope that while what I had seen so far was by no means bad, that maybe there was something just around the corner that would really make me sink my teeth into the game and not want to let go. Add in the seldom present (but well executed) musical score and unimpressive level design and sadly, that just never really happened.[footnote]What the hell is up with all the cardboard boxes? Do corrugated paper products gain the ability to reproduce in the future or what?[/footnote]