I beat the game yesterday, but haven't gotten the chance to post my impressions. Did the whole thing in splitscreen co-op. Have to say, I'm kind of disappointed.
A lot of the changes are pretty good. I don't mind the new weapon system, in theory (it at least cuts down on the "keep one bug alive and hunt for pickups" stuff in 2017). Active reload is a welcome improvement, making some of the bigger weapons more viable, and reducing rolling reload downtime. Classes are interesting and unique, and at least at first, I enjoyed messing with different groups and different styles of play. I'm glad that vehicles are actually usable now, and there's greater variety in enemy types than before. I don't think that it quite matches 2017's enemy density (unless you're on a difficulty level where enemies don't die, you almost never get surrounded), but it remains pretty hectic.
That said, the longer missions are definitely a minus. Whereas EDF's pacing felt pretty breezy, and each encounter could be more dangerous, here things often turned into long slogs where after each objective, I'd be hoping for the end of the mission, only to find myself having to track down yet another anthill or something. I wish each mission were chopped up into two or three other missions. It didn't help that many of the enemies felt like bullet sponges. Wasps, Large Hectors, and Carriers take far longer to bring down than they ought. I appreciated that there were some good indicators for the larger foes of how low their health had gotten, but it was kind of annoying sometimes.
I like the weapon unlock system in theory, but in practice, it has a lot of flaws. The biggest one is that there's no indication, on choosing a weapon, what it does. No stats or descriptions of any kind. That makes it tough to tell which weapon to buy, especially when faced with three different guns of the same class in the same tier. There's no way to tell what they do except in a mission, and since missions are long, you're not going to get a lot of chances at experimentation, unless you die. And since guns are gated based on tier (even weapon-dropped guns are), there is absolutely no incentive to play the difficulties out of order. Not that you would anyways, because Hard is nearly impossible with the starting weapons, since enemies take ages to die. As someone who beat EDF2017 starting on Hard before Normal, it was very disappointing to find myself forced to go to Normal off the bat.
Also, while beating EDF2017 felt climactic and rewarding, the ending here is a disappointing tease, culminating in repetitive battles against some of the bullet-spongiest enemies, and finishing with a cutscene that made me wonder if I had done something wrong. I felt let down upon completing the game, instead of feeling elated. Not fun.
I like the game, and I'm going to go back to it later to do more in Campaign Remix or Hard, but 2017 is a better product. Its cheese is more childishly enthusiastic, and the missions are just better-designed.
