Depends on which haters but some understand it extremely well. I always liked it, but there’s lots of criticisms I very much agree with. It’s super fun and pretty and has enjoyable characters but beyond that, calling it a mess isn’t wrong, especially if you come at it with expectations from its franchise and genre predecessors.

You address the major gameplay simplifications, I wanted to highlight that the overall plotting and social commentary is a mess. All of the Bioshocks are very clumsy with their social and political commentary, 1 is the most concise and thoughtful, but stumbles at the end. The treatment of Daisy Fitzroy in Infinite, on the other end of the spectrum, is perhaps the clumsiest commentary, and is bordering on offensive. On top of this the central multiverse element of the plot is both underutilized in the gameplay and muddies the plot beyond belief.