The gameplay was fun. I like the cover system, and I especially love the hacking minigame. It's fun and rewards both tactical thinking and investing in hacking augs. I spent probably half my game hacking into every computer and security terminal I could find, even when I had the password. I haven't played this game a a heavy, but it seems like HR favours the stealth hacker build. With the exception of the first boss fight I was whining about in the previous thread, the combat wasn't much of a problem for me - even the subsequent boss fights were really easy once I spent the praxis points on the Typhoon. On the easy difficulty the Anna Navarre ripoff* took two Typhoon bursts, as did the third boss guy in the room with the creepy muscle statues. I love how conversations are done here. You actually have to pay attention to what the person is saying and approach every conversation differently to get the most out of everyone, which I think more closely approximates what a real conversation is like. I also appreciated the relative lack of environmental puzzles, that was easily my least favourite part of the original.

* also, bummed that those two turned out to be not Hermann Gunter and Anna Navarre. Though I did get a kick out of seeing young Tracer Tong.

The biggest complaint I have is the level of gameplay and story segregation. It's not just the boss fights. It's really jarring to sneak around for the entire level then watch Jensen just bull his way through a cutscene. And his whole look screams 'secret agent man', so it's weird when you can pretend to be some clueless guy and people believe you. That brings me to the second biggest peeve I have: I don't like Jensen. Not in a shrugging "eh, he's bland" kind of way. I actively dislike him. JC Denton was dour and taciturn, but I don't remember him being an arsehole unless you specifically chose that option. Jensen, though, seems like kind of a boorish meathead from the cutscenes and some conversations where you don't get to choose what he says.

I chose the Sarif one, and, going through the different options, the Sarif one still seems the most convincing, and Jensen is at his most eloquent in that one. The Darrow and Taggart ones end on kind of a dark note, I think it's implied that they're the 'wrong' choices.