RF:A is both better and worse than its predecessor, but what they both share is: they just know how to disappoint.
Now, what makes this one better than Guerrilla is that its more story driven with a lot of cutscenes. It also have some very nice environments - for an underground based game. Variety of vehicles to drive including flyer, overall good premise. Game have a bigger "point", a driver making you want to fight through to the end. Characters including your hero have nice touch of personality. Unlike predecessor, physics and destruction model in this game have a bigger point to be, it can help you destroy enemies quicker. It is not meaningless sandbox without much point that spawn mostly generic objectives like from random generator.
What is worse however, aside of being linear is that game is very short but worse, its kind of bland and have such glaring flaws I don`t know where to start:
Difficulty is out of whack. Good games are balanced in such way they give you feel of completion, an adequate challenge on every difficulty level and relative balance through game. This game, no matter what difficulty you choose will feel like retarded easy with a spots of being retarded hard for one simple reason: the way enemy spawn. There are "structures" you have to destroy often quite far ahead that are spawning enemies et. infinity, but enemy(we speak about "bug-enemy" type here just to know) also spawn from random places in limited numbers. Because you will want to destroy these structures as quick as possible you will find yourself rushing to them, only to get overwhelmed by really huge numbers.
One other reason that can make you ignoring threat and rush is that most of time they actually just jump around cave or just stay on walls ignoring you, making you think they are no threat - until its too late. Not only bugs spawn, but also mentioned enemy structures that spawn them, often right in front of your eyes later in game. Because you will get fed up of shooting ever so respawning enemies, you quickly realize easiest way is to ignore them and run toward objective marker. If game encourage this gameplay mechanics, then its a poor game at best in my book.
And this is truly badly designed here. AI is very weak and later towards end you fight hordes of spawning enemies. No matter what difficulty you choose, good first half of the game is way too easy with some unbalanced spots that are better to avoid(again, by running away toward objective) and latest parts can be just stupid(not challenging, stupid) even on easy. Your health meter replenish after very short time loosing point being as it is then just like games without health meter.
So the only way game can challenge you is by overwhelming you. This is its biggest problem and it have weird feel because of this. It is really unfortunate that such otherwise interesting game is marred with these design flaws so badly, I don`t know what were those retards thinking. It makes you mad because all potential is there. Game give you possibility to purchase various upgrades, yet again because lack of proper design this small RPG system feels meh. With game that is better to rush through levels as quick as possible ignoring most of enemies, you will stop care and just go through quickly.
Think about it, if game try to keep you on one place by spawning batches of enemies and you know after clearing there come another batch and after that another and another but you also know their IQ is lower than of your cat and you also know few meters further either you reach checkpoint with past enemies having hard time even following/tracking you or there is already objective that may reset whole scene or end level, what you do? Well why not just run there and occasionally kill things on your way? But that`s not good.
Instead, if they made it so that health wont replenish at all expect by finding carefully placed medics stations, enemies being less and in limited number but actually presenting tactical threat, no structures that spawn them at all, well balanced difficulty and AI as well as upgrades, destruction model having even more strategic use but not overdone like here - especially with its "nano repair", game could be really something.
As for story and any other production values, RF:A is passable in every other regard, which means its ok but no cigar. I haven`t found myself having hard time to leave game...
I still like this more than Guerrilla because despite that one being more open game it really felt like weak GTA clone with its own problems but that doesn`t mean this is good game either. Console version was already reviewed with score 8/10. Mainly because of its "awesome magnet gun"? Later with hordes of respawning enemies and its rather slow recharge time I found it pointless and I didn`t like it very much anyway. Best weapons for me were one that dissolve enemies and one that generate black hole. I used magnet gun only few times and it wasn't that exciting to me.
This game have great potential, interesting premise, good controls for PC, "ok" story, characters and production values, awesome physics. But its literally wasted in toilette by questionable design decisions, bad enemy AI, rather weak gameplay mechanics, short campaign and overall just wasted potential. I still recommend to play it but it is really unfortunate because, just ask yourself: how many games out there offer this level of destruction physics? Not many I guess...
PS: At first I experienced random freezing during gameplay, I reinstalled to latest GPU driver and also reinstalled VCRedist libraries. After that I had no single crash since, if that would help.