It's been a few days and I'm still sort of mulling over opinions on the game which is turning out to be really frustrating and irritating. I can't seem to pin a solid overall mindset on the game, either, since I just feel there are a good number of flaws to it, too, not just my own dislike of "time travel/multiple dimension" stuff.
I don't think I'll ever get a solid stance on my feelings about the story; I get the feeling I'll always just feel "blegh" about it as I do Deadly Premonition, Mass Effect, Catherine, and several other games with narratives that don't sit right with me. But given that, I also feel the combat was a bit lackluster, and not only that but the pacing in the latter half of the game just kind of gets weird and uninteresting. At least the latter half just feels like shootbang the game and you stop interacting with NPCs in non-shoot-them-in-the-face capacities. This basically ceases after Fitzroy is cut out of the picture.
Speaking of Fitzroy, I'm still a bit miffed as to how she was taken out of the story and it just didn't feel like a satisfying closure to her character and the context behind her and the Vox going apeshit on you never felt good for me and continued to be so all the way to the end. I liked what they had going with Fitzroy but then she's snuffed out and I just felt we didn't see her enough.
Back on the pacing, I just get a feeling that the whole second half was rushed, this is especially so with the boys of silence who were only in the game for maybe 30 minutes tops and it would have been cool to have maybe one more section with them. That little bit was still memorable, I just wish it was longer. And regarding the combat, the enemy variety also stops changing after Fitzroy is out (yah, you see a lot of 'Vox' variants of enemies but they really aren't mechanically different from the regular variants). There's the siren but I hated the siren fights and they just grew so clusterfuck-y and not enjoyable for me. Basically any fight without rails around were pretty "eh". This might have been due to playing on hard but with a high concentration of enemies with chain guns and rockets in the latter half and being unable to get around quickly (in cases with battles without rails), fights just grew a bit frustrating to manage when I constantly just had to sit in cover.
I know there were a few comments on how people are highly critical of this game to "balance out" the constant praise (and to be fair it's a bit lonesome/annoying/etc to be surrounded by people who are just constantly in a state of "THIS GAME IS FLAWESS/AMAZING/PERFECT" and not feel that same joy), but I had these complaints in my head in-the-moment as I was playing the game but after getting through the ending my frustrations with the story became all-consuming. To serve as a compliment to infinite, I started playing Bioshock 2 again and god damn am I enjoying the writing and characters in that game.
edit: Rereading this I feel like I'm trashing this game too much but I'd argue it's because I'm having a shitty reaction to the ending and am purposefully not mentioning the things I enjoyed. I liked the motion of the combat when there are rails (again, I'll mention multiple times that sections without rails feel imbalanced almost due to the high concentration of enemies with chain guns and explosives). I enjoyed a few of the vigors a lot (Sender specifically) and I liked used the water vigor on the ship due to being able to just push all the enemies off the side (made things a lot easier). I liked Fitzroy, I liked the moments when you could just walk around uninterrupted, I liked doing things in the world and having Elizabeth comment on them (I remember this specifically with killing Slate after choosing to spare him earlier and her commenting on me mercy killing him).
