I really enjoyed the first five-ten hours but was pretty disappointed after that. Once you've screwed around in the open world for a few hours, the game really doesn't throw many new ideas at you. The last like 5 missions that are all linear were really boring and too many of the boss fights were bullet sponges.
It felt like if they came up with one or two more grapple-hook level tools, then polished a few more things, didn't repeat the same three environments the whole game, it would have been something really special. As it stands, it really falls short of what I thought it was trying to be. It's hard to finish the game and not feel like they were just trying to reach a minimal viable product.
Genuinely one of the most repetitive and boring campaigns I've ever played. The first Halo game literally repeats multiple levels backwards and still makes those levels more interesting and engaging than anything in this game. I don't thing you can possibly get a better lesson in game design than that. Completely agree with your entire post.
Every single main story mission where you go underground in the ring is the exact same thing. Same corridors, same rooms, the only thing that changes is sometime you fight a bunch of normal enemies at the end, sometimes it's a boss. Then the other main missions are just "climb this slightly different tower to fight this other boring big bad thing".
The combat is fun, the mix-up of the game-play is good, little bits like the unique upgraded weapons are cool, filling an armored limousine with marines and handing them lasers is great. But you only get to use any of those things to do any one of 40 copy and pasted bases scattered around the map. At least I can enjoy some of the good parts in the multiplayer, I guess.