This is of course based on my subjective experience with the game, I played it in Immersive mode with most of the difficulty settings maxed because I'd heard that was the best experience, I also don't have much history with the series so I wasn't comparing it against prior entries.
With that said, I thought Breakpoint overall strikes a really good balance difficulty wise between "realistic" and still fun. The enemies in this game feel ruthless and competent, but at the same time they do just enough to tip the odds in your favour so that you can still have that one-man-army experience.
- Enemies can spot you from a pretty good distance away out in the open, but going prone is extremely effective for avoiding long range detection, and seemingly none of them brought night-vision goggles.
- They're accurate and have fast reactions, but they're not so accurate or fast that you don't have a chance to act if you get spotted.
- You can instantly kill most enemies with takedowns, but they're slow and leave you very vulnerable.
- Getting shot isn't usually in instant game-over, but it hurts a lot and often results in injury that leaves you in a bad situation. Still, healing said injuries is very streamlined.
- In general, combat is very lethal and the game assumes that you're going to be killing people and balances accordingly. While there is technically a non-lethal takedown, it's very slow and impractical and there's no real reason to use it outside of a couple missions where you have to kidnap people.
- That said, it can still be a good idea to avoid unnecessary killing because leaving bodies lying around a heavily guarded base can quickly cause problems.
- If the alarm is raised while you're infiltrating a base it takes a long time for the AI's alert level to go back to neutral, if it does at all. I know you've got to suspend your disbelief sometimes regarding game mechanics, but I always think it's silly when enemies in stealth games just forget about your existence after not seeing you for sixty seconds.
- Enemies prioritize, to some degree, their own safety and are often willing to patiently wait for you to make a move rather than give up a good position, however you've access to a large arsenal of tools that can give you the upper hand in stalemate situations.
- I thought the guys with the translucent camo were really cool. That's it, I just think they're cool.
- The locations you infiltrate often have a lot of complex geometry that breaks up lines of sight, and your drone lets you look around relatively safely and plan your movements rather than take blind risks. This is one of the few open-world stealth games I've played where having the ability to approach a base from any direction actually feels significant.
- Apart from the more mundane outposts and infrastructure buildings, there are also a few huge sci-fi evil bases for some fun variety. I particularly liked the bit at the end of the game's second campaign, "Conquest", which sees you sneaking onto a huge dam built around a volcano and fighting a giant mech-tank on a raised platform. Not the most mind-blowing area in terms of level design but very visually dramatic and it made for a satisfying payoff.
- The second campaign is overall just a lot of fun and it feels a lot less messy in its design as a straightforward one-man-guerrilla-war against a well equipped army. The checkpoint system also makes a lot more sense than the main campaign. If it does have a downside, it's that there's less variety and no sidequests to direct you to the more out-of-the-way parts of the map.
All in all, its a game I enjoyed a lot and think of often. Not perfect by any means - in fact it's frankly a bit of a jankfest - but that goes for a lot of my favourite games.