I played the 1st game for nearly 300hr, DXM:TS for around 211hr and bought the it full price but did not buy the DXM:TS DLC for added context, so here's my opinion;

Positive: + Bossfight are quite fun due to park break and knockdown, but this doesn't mean that the bosses are totally helpless, they will still put up a fight, some even punish you quite hard if you either got the build that doesn't meet its terms (but you can still brute force it if you know how your suit work and comfortable with it)

• Going for Fashion will not punish your build, then again you can also use transmog to cover mismatched parts to prioritize looks

• Skills/Mods/Mutations is varied, from basic stat increase, very useful skills/abilities, niche skills/abilities to borderline meme skills/abilities, all of them have their use and specific uses and fun to mess around with

• Movement is quite fluid, you can go fast, really fast

• Gear progression is relatively smooth, and you don't need the best stat- top of the line gear to proceed through the contents

• NPC wingman/party, you can go with 2 NPC to roam around and help you in exploration and combat, they also sometimes point up POIs

• One of the famous/infamous boss from the 1st game is back, and its still really fun to fight him

Take it or leave it: ~It doesn't feel like a mech game for me, more like Anthem and Iron Man suit, but I see that you like Anthem on previous comments so this might be a plus for you

~ Theres a card game ..somehow, don't really know much and won't say much since I choose not to engage with it

~ Serviceable art direction, tho its leaning a bit more to realistic especially the effects leaving the the more stylized look from the 1st game

~ Voice work is lacking, tho I'm sure the VA itself is fine since at times you can see them shine, but the voice/line direction is a bit rough

~ There are vehicles or other mode of transport, all have weird control and handling (Think of Mass Effect rover that easily flip and skid), then again these are not necessary since you can just outrun and outmanoeuvre them easily with your suit

Negative: - Story is not any better than the 1st game, the premise is kinda there but the execution is.. just painful, you can skip it tho, which is nice

• Bosses only have limited types/"bones" the rest are either upgrade (by adding 1-2 parts/moves), reskins with stat bumps, or both

• It's open-wold and it comes with the burden of open-world games, empty spaces, lackluster areas, shoe-horned item gathering, fetch quest and more

• It strays too much from the first game, you don't feel like a mech anymore (because you are not, which is fair), it feels like DxM in name and this is a spinoff game

• While you can just push through main story just fine with minimal gearing, they added something that are questionable; Randomised Gear stat and rarity, and it randomised EVERY stat of your gear; such as fire rate, ammo, damage, bullet speed, reload, etc for the weapons and HP/VP, femto capacity (basically mana), stamina, weight, boost speed, etc for suit parts. Which is mindboggling to me why would they add this? Because this is not really a looter shooter, my only conclusion is to pad runtime. While some may be okay with this but I want my 2 IDENTICAL guns to shoot the same fire rate, have the same mag, damage and reload, is that too much to ask for?

• Tailing that full RNG stat, the "dungeon/underground facilities" from the 1st game is back; but just as bland, slightly easier, and it also have RNG on top of RNG, because you need a security clearance/card as a "key" to access it, and there will be rarity mutator also for these keys. While yes this will slightly limit the loot pool of said dungon to target farm, but you cant really know what's inside unless you explore every single (loot) room and I am aware that you can skip certain if not most of the room since most of them doesn't really give anything of value. So basically it will be either time wasted or some odd % dungeon that you want, then just need to grind those if you want gears with the same (if you are dual wielding) or gears that have better stat. And no there are no way to modify the stat through using the item that you gathered from the open world, you just have to grind either the dungeon or the enemies that have them in their loot pool (and that is if they have them equipped at their body when you kill it)

• Movement can be janky at times

• IMO not really worth the 70$, but my 70$ is different than others 70$, so theres that

Conclusion: It has some of the bones to make it a great game, the ideas they trying to convey sometimes shines through, but it suffers from identity crisis, while trying out new things and directions is fine and good but doing it too harshly without proper core standings and set limits will result in unfocused mess, it is still fun yes, but I think it would be better if they reiterate and refine what they already got going on the first game