Pacific Assault is everything from immersive to frustrating and back, leaving players with a lot of mixed reactions.
The Medal of Honor series has always been rather linear, and PA is no different. The experience you'll get in this game are far different from Far Cry, which was also released in 2004 and offers superior freedom and choices to players heading into the jungle. This has pros and cons, the obvious pros being a more immersing storyline, with scripted events and a real sense of direction. On the flip side means the jungles of PA are extremely small and offer little to no room to move around and flank enemies, instead you'll find yourself walking into an invisible wall after you stray only a few meters from the path.
Unlike in Medal of Honor Allied Assault you'll be stuck with the same group of team-mates for the entire game in PA. This does wonders for the story, but it also means members of your team can and will not die, ever, which is of course as unrealistic as it gets. They also range from highly useful (the medic), to nice (the machine gunner), to completely useless and nothing but a source of frustration (all your team-mates during the infamous 'Flyboys' mission). Again, mixed reactions.
Speaking of which, the missions are also very varied in quality. The first short missions do little to attract your attention, and it's not until the mission 'Henderson Field' that the real Medal of Honor experience starts to show itself. This continues in 'Luga River', which gives an excellent experience of what fighting in the jungle means. The final mission 'Tarawa' is perhaps an even more impressive account of an invasion than Allied Assault's Omaha Beach was, the intensity and madness that your group of US Marines ends up in is excellent. A star contrast to the mission prior to it, 'Flyboys'. On route in an aircraft your pilot decides to bail out, leaving you at the controls of the plane. So far so good? Not quite, as this is the most frustrating experience of the entire game. Not only are your team-mates completely useless, they seem to take pleasure in getting you into trouble as well. It's probably best to let Flight Sims be Flight Sims, and FPS games be FPS games.
PA comes with a nice choice of difficulty settings and the option to read actual historic information of the battles and equipment used. Sound and graphics are nice for a 2004 game, and if you can look past the extremely limited freedom, are good enough for an immersing experience even today. Fans of the series, and people interested in a some change from the standard 'shoot the German' concept of World War II FPS games will definitely enjoy playing Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault.