Disgusting marketing strategy, don't blow money on this!
They SLACKED OFF SO HARD to push this game to a release date while forgetting to actually focus on quality gameplay.
This is all about cheap, shallow quantity. How many Lay's chips or much french fries can you eat relentlessly before you get sick and puke.
Its all a matter of management and businessmen who call the shots. The game starts out beautifully, but they drop the ball and resort to a bunch of meaningless distractions held up by an artificial, extraneous reward system.
Playing for rewards and not for fun is becoming an outdated gameplay model.
Their "innovation" over Saints Row: the Third (a game so far superior to this one) is that now you can make your character an all-out unstoppable superhuman machine of destruction. A bunch of boring, extraneous "training" missions take place after each event to give you a new superpower that you totally don't need. At some point, its no fun to use all these superpowers when you're just running a knife through butter with zero resistance even in "hardcore" mode. Why bother with any of it if you can get through the game without even bringing up the upgrades menu?
If there's no real necessity for it, then its a waste of time! Simple concept! Is this game designed exclusively for kids or what? Stop insulting our intelligence for the love of god.
I could easily enjoy this game if at least there was a reason to get the upgrades. But there isn't. It's beyond-extremely-easy no matter what difficulty you play at.
It saddens me because there is so much talent, entertainment value, excellent voice acting, and stellar art direction but it all goes to waste because the game is rushed and so easy that it's not worth playing.
This is such a problem with modern gaming and I'll have nothing to do with it.
Gone is the minimalist approach which forces you to play smart and efficient and conquer a challenge which is what provides actual satisfaction and a true feeling of reward.
So all they've really done is regress. The Third was a blast, but don't waste time on this one.