I think i will carry on with the game, after rading some of your thoughts. I pretty much gave up half way through the first open world area. The game was just too slow and clunky, with constant mini cutscenes whenever you do anything. It feels very old school in design. And the game could push Tarantino for thre amount of pointless dialogue in the game!. The AI though, well it has to be the worst i have experienced since the PS2 gen, i am honestly shocked that more people are not moaning about the AI, its completely braindead, to the point that it pulls you out of the game.
I have had much more fun with Far Cry New Dawn, which imo does the story based FPS style much more modern and seamless.
I'll go back to Metro though, i really liked the first 2 Metro's, and i suppose i should give this game a proper shot before passing judgement.
The swamp region is the second best in my opinion because of the atmosphere of it. Forest region is the best but smallest and the desert was third out of the three. The linear corridor segments in between open regions are great in my opinion. The story, characters, narrative is excellent. Voice acting is top notch. Yes, it's a slow game but meant to be more realistic as opposed to say Far Cry which is completely arcade like. I beat New Dawn before metro in like 30 hours and yeah, I can see where it's more "fun" than Metro Exodus but New Dawn isn't meant to be taken seriously. I rated it an 8/10 which is probably overrating it but he visuals and gameplay carried it for me. Story was a 7 at best. hated the sisters as they're horrible.
While Exodus also has a silent protagonist, everything story, character, narrative and writing wise is so strong that it can carry that negative but in the last two Far Cry games, it's horrible. Too much of a joke/circus story in my opinion. The character creation makes it even worse. Of course, I have Far Cry 4 > Primal > Far Cry 3 > Blood Dragon ranked ahead of New Dawn and Far Cry 5 respectively.
While playing New Dawn, I honestly just wanted to wrap it up and get to Metro Exodus simply because I knew it was the better game and it is. I understand people's complaints with it and to be honest, the first two regions should have been more like the third which is smaller and more condensed. It simply fits better. But with that said, so much of the game itself is so strong that the few negatives I had were far outweighed by the positives.
As far enemy AI, well, im not good in FPS and I played 2033 and Last light on normal and got my ass kicked so I played Exodus on easy as I didn't want to get aggravated and frustrated with all the enemies being bullet sponges which they are at times on easy unless you get a direct headshot or two. AI wise though, yeah some of it was dumb but other times, enemies would snipe me, flank me or just flat out rush me. Monster/creature wise, they were more just straight on coming after me and if you get a few of them at once, they can definitely take you down.
Even on easy, I still had a challenge and died a good amount of times but in fairness, im nowhere near as good in first person games as I am in third person games. Overall though, outside of a few exceptions here and there, I didn't have much of an issue with the enemy AI. If anything, they were smarter and more aggressive than I was expecting since I played on easy.
Far Cry New Dawn is definitely more seamless but outside of one character which I won't mention, I didn't give two shits about my "fake" character or any other character in the entire game. It was just so blah to me. Really wish Ubisoft would go back to what made Far Cry 4/Primal/3 great which is a preset character (just have to make the protagonist better background wise and whatnot), the hunting, skinning of animals, crafting, etc. And most of all, better antagonist that's fully developed and that you can converse in.
I would say to stick with Exodus and at the very least, just play through the story objectives and ignore the exploration if the aspect of more open areas is a negative to you.