For those of us here in North America who have played the game, keep in mind that it does not come out officially en masse until tomorrow for Europe(it went live as of 2 hours and 36 minutes ago however). So no spoilers.
I'm breaking this into three components: Multiplayer, Story, and Side Missions.
First up is the Multiplayer.
Multiplayer
The multiplayer would be great...if you had never played any other game out there. The controls are fine and the gameplay is smooth but it is player hosted rather than server hosted and the game suffers for that. Add to it the stupidly designed unlock system(you require both a token -AND- a set amount of cash) and it becomes very easy for new players to be overwhelmed by those individuals who have more levels on them.
Add to it that the "High Firepower Pack" DLC that was a launch day release automatically unlocks guns for both multiplayer and singleplayer without the player having to buy them and it becomes problematic.
Another fault is the "Level" system. It mistakes your player level for your skill level and places you accordingly. I've run into no less than eight groups which are actively utilizing this to be complete toolbags and ruin lower level games by having a rank 1 in their group (the system matches you based upon the lowest rank in your party, not the party leader's rank).
All it would take to get the game to be "fun" is server hosting and carryovers of
SP weapons to
MP; which is not that unreasonable considering that
SP and
MP share the same pool of cash.
Story
As far as the story goes, it's pretty good. I refuse to say more.
The missions are a good mixture of combat and stealth, with a few missions requiring perfect stealth but having a few "go loud" moments.
You can play the entire game as stealth/nonlethals(referred to as "Ghost" playstyle) if you want to, without really being penalized for never killing anyone.
There's also the "Assault" playstyle which is grenades and all kinds of goodies.
"Panther" is a blend of Ghost and Assault, stealthily killing enemies without being detected.
One thing you need to know is to set aside a certain amount of funds to fully upgrade your plane as it is completely worth it. The upgrades are things like faster health regen in
SP/side missions, the ability to have "Dead Drops" and Laptops marked on your HUD, or the ability to change your kit on the fly in the field via the "Restock" cases.
Side Missions
Did you like Conviction's side missions? The "Hunter", "Survival", and "Infiltration" gametypes have returned. As of launch there are 3 separate missions(4 for the "Hunter" gametype if you preordered) for each gametype. Each of the missions is given to you by a member of your support team and each has a unique reward associated with it(Hunter gives you a pair of heavily armored legplates, Survival gives you a heavily armored chestplate, Infiltration gives you the stealthiest torso/legplates in the game).
Coop Story missions are given to you by the coop teammate, Briggs. I have not had the chance to try these yet as my usual coop partner is in the
UK where the game released only a few hours ago. There are multiple rewards for completing those missions however.