I don't think it plays particularly well. It keeps all the clunky stealth mechanics from HR, including the canned takedown animations that take you out of the game to play a little cut-scene every time.
And the writing is really bad and ham-fisted. It can't wait to get in your face with its Big, Important socio-political metaphors. It doesn't first try to make you care about the world or its characters, and you're not out of the tutorial before your first dream vision of Jensen being Icarus flying too close to the sun (for some reason) pops up. I find it especially hard to give a shit about Jensen as a tortured soul with a messiah complex. Motherfucker has godlike powers but I'm expected to sympathize with his mopey, mumbly bullshit.
The setting doesn't do anything for me either, aesthetically. It just doesn't come together at all, nothing clicks.
