I don't think it's a bad game, but coming off TNO/TOB replays just make this feel off. And I don't want to keep using the word feel because it's so vague and arbitrary, but its subjective relevance is still important. So far my major gripes with The New Colossus is that it doesn't have the tight, forward moving level design and pacing of The New Order, where encounters hit memorably hard and exhilarating thanks to very satisfying enemy hit feedback if admittedly poor player hit feedback. The New Order would drip feed smaller encounters and peaks of excitement with a few scattered, smaller stealth zones. AI was simple, but decently engaging in taking cover and giving the illusion of awareness.
By contrast, The New Colossus has little of this thrill. Hit feedback on enemies lacks the messy, loud punch of The New Order. The weapons are not particularly satisfying to use. The stages are (so far) a mix of too large and too tight, missing the organic flow between encounters and AI responsiveness of its predecessor. Too often I've seen the AI meander and walk straight into dumb situations, almost as if their responsiveness to combat is apathy, or that their dynamic movement and scripting isn't complex enough to accommodate the larger play zones. Levels that dump a commander or two far away from the player as you toss up between grinding through longish stretches of level design to try and find them, or gruelling through mediocre combat via alerts. The hit feedback on the player is borderline non-existent. TNO/TOB had a lot of issues in this regard too but maaaaaaaan it's worse than ever here. I'd go as far as to say this has some of the worst player hit feedback I've ever seen in a shooter; it's rubbish. The guns are ugly and poorly textured, somehow worse than The New Order / The Old Blood, I'm guessing due to using full model model assets and id Tech not coping well.
I don't know. I'm not disliking it but if I was being cripplingly honest my first thought based on early impressions are "disappointed". The cast and writing are absolutely on point, and there are beats of brilliance (particularly the opening), but it's sad to think that the parts where I'm not playing are currently the tethers dragging me through. It shouldn't be like this, because The New Order wasn't, and outside of it's miserably slow opening The Old Blood generally wasn't either. The New Order had its own wealth of issues but for me personally it rose above these with more than the story. The moment-to-moment play was superb. I cannot say the same for The New Colossus.
EDIT: I think a perfect example of how utterly bizarre the encounter and difficult design is can be highlighted through any appearance of those Uber soldiers, or whatever those bigger, armoured soldiers with lasers, rocket boosts, and such. These struck me as your "heavily armoured super guy" cliche mixed in with encounters, like The New Order had but on steroids. And all of them so far have been weak as piss; the game either handing me well overpowered equipment before they showed up (like armour piercing round upgrades, or my own laser / rocket thing), or the AI is so braindead they don't pose a threat and I quickly chew through them with standard weapons. Meanwhile be caught in an entanglement with two standard soldiers out in the open and watch your health deteriorate to zero in a matter of seconds.
