This installment takes the franchise in a different direction; it's now mostly a mix of Bayonetta, Dark Souls, and Super Metroid. No map, but you can explore the world as you see fit, and obtain new movement abilities to reach new areas. What really killed it for me was the combat; it's fast and fluid, but the controls are surprisingly unresponsive, especially the dash, healing, and transformation. This wouldn't even be a problem, except even little trash mobs can kill you in 4 hits or less; one of those other elements (or even just the camera) NEEDS to work well in a game like this, but it's just broken. Some fiths are easy, some are hard, and most feel like a toss of the dice. I'm being generous with the rating, because some of that might be my fault, because of how I leveled or whatever. I do also enjoy getting all the different weapons and using their special powers.
The art is beautiful, though, especially Fury's design. The world is surprisngly colorful; not as pretty as that of its predecessor, but the underwater sections are just stunning. Unfortunately, this is tempered by some shockingly incoherent writing. I could see bits and pieces not connecting with the other games, or even the same game, if you have multiple writers, but there are some pretty major details that got screwed up, and one of the most baffling cutscenes I've ever witnessed; I'm STILL not entirely sure what happened there, and the game never really addresses it, either. Not that the writing in this series is mind-blowing, or why you should be playing it in the first place, but this was noteworthy. Fury's pretty awful, too, but to her credit, she does change and grow over the course of the adventure, even if the writers come right out and say they're throwing up their hands as to how.
I wanted to like this a lot more, and it does have some great elements, but it breeds a little resentment what it dragged me through by dangling those carrots.