izigame.me

This game has some really cool aspects and others which I absolutely didn't like, which makes it difficult to classify as a good or a bad game since it isn't necessarily either but a bit of both.
First of all, the setting of the game and the Metro franchise is very cool and immersive, and this becomes obvious from the first missions, which are really interesting and fun at the same time. However, my experience with the game changed completely as soon as the characters left Moscow and approached other locations, such as the bunker or the desert. These settings were very mediocre and provided most of the boring parts of the campaign. Things became much better only in the final mission in the abandoned city, which I think is by far the best mission in the game and was designed really well by the developers.
Now, I know that all the other Metro games were set entirely in Moscow and that the developers may have wanted to change some things or experiment with different settings and scenarios, but I think that the game lost so much potential and interest on my side just because of the dull locations and missions which ended up filling a large chunk of the campaign.
This brings me to my next biggest concern, which is the story. I had high expectations regarding this game's narrative as I had looked up the story of the previous Metro games and found them extremely cool and interesting, so I expected nothing less from Metro Exodus. I can say that I was massively disappointed by what I experienced.
Already from the beginning I could sense that there was something wrong, as the interactions and dialogues between the characters were a bit empty and not a lot was happening. However, from the instant they left Moscow, the story completely fell apart. For the whole duration of the game, I still can't remember a useful or interesting mission in the whole campaign. It is as if no story was being narrated, and the only objective during missions was to gather resources and help get the train moving again in order to reach another location a few months later and repeat the process. After this incredibly useless and boring jorney brings us to the final mission of the game, things start to get a little more interesting and the mission itself is actually really cool. However, the ending of the game left me extremely disappointed as it was just so dull and unoriginal.
Something which I don't have very clear thoughts on is the gameplay. I would say it was alright, a bit clunky but with some cool features and a decent pace, although the enemies' AI was quite poor and clumsy sometimes. Mainly in the snowy and radioactive regions, the gameplay blended really nicely with the atmosphere, which I think is the only reason that kept me playing the game (although I did take ages to complete it as I had no interest at all in continuing for weeks after I finished a mission).
Actually, another strong aspect of the game are the graphics, which I felt were quite good overall but not as incredible and godlike as I saw other people say. I played on Ultra graphics quality and High ray tracing with an RTX 3060, and my FPS averaged between 80 and 140 depending on the location, and they were generally very stable, making the game feel quite smooth. There were some locations in which the graphics were awesome, such as the cities and the forest towards the end of the game, and others in which they seemed terrible to me, such as the desert, while the indoor sections were quite good-looking but nothing too special I would say.
Overall, I believe that the game has many cool foundations and does some things really well, but the whole experience is ruined by the middle chunk of the campaign which is incredibly useless and boring. Also the rest of the story is pointless and unoriginal, but what saves those sections of the game is a much better setting and atmosphere which gave me something to hang onto, although not enough to save me from a generally negative experience with this game.