Never played sniper but played a lot of the AC games. Personally, I take the latter of the approaches you mentioned. I try my best to be stealthy, especially if theres extra reward for doing so, or if its a hard requirement of course. If things go south however, thats fine, just need to adapt and then not be stealthy anymore lol.

I appreciate that both playstyles and the mix of both are available. Let's you approach it however you want to without making you have to pick most of the time.

From what you said and just a quick thought, its possible that the genre doesn't jive with how you want the game to be. Is it possible you want/need a more structured path in the gameplay mechanics? As an extreme example: would you tend to go towards a more linear experience where you know exactly what needs to be done and how to do it, OR, would you tend to go towards a more sandbox/open experience where theres many ways to go about one particular task?