It's...alright. The game is decent but it feels half baked in so many ways. Might as well say the good things are that the voice cast from the dub all reprise their roles and they all do a good job. The look, sound and feel of the SAC TV series are replicated pretty well here. The game's production values overall is of high quality. The music is pretty good and is better than the music of Arise and 2045, surprisingly. The guns feel nice and the damage animations have a solid feedback to them. The game also checkpoints really well and gives you a health refill at the start of each checkpoint after death, I also think the partially regen health is nice since I prefer an inbetween of regen and finite rather than have it be on either extreme. This is where my praise ends.
The game isn't horrible but it isn't good either. The game has a number of half baked ideas that isn't really fleshed out that well. To name examples, hacking into people is only ever mandatory for one part of the game, and that is in the first level with the snipers, you control a jameson cyborg only once, you play as Tachikoma only once and the level is less than 5 minutes, it makes me wonder why they even bother adding in a Tachikoma level if it's not even going to be that long nor does it feel that empowering. It certainly doesn't feel on par with riding a caragoor in the Middle Earth games where you get to wreck havoc and have an empowering theme playing. There is the melee system which can allow you to chain into multiple enemies which you never need. Stuff like throwing knives are useless with the Major since they do little damage and the wind up animation is so long, grenades and other throwable are useful and they fortunately have nice feedback to them.
Speaking of the Major, the platforming levels with her are really awkward, and while a part of me finds charming because of their early 00s platforming jank but they just don't feel that enjoyable to control or play and they tend to feel unpolished, precise jumps can be difficult and the ledge grab doesn't always work when you want it to. I tend to prefer Batou's levels mainly in that they tend to be more focused on shooting and have very little platforming. All though the heavy shooting parts leads into another problem I have with the game in that the game not just only finds a way of upping challenge by throwing in lots of enemies at you and them being hitscan at that and having your evade command be useless because the camera is out of your control when the animation plays, but you can bypass a good number of the shootouts by running to the next waypoint since the game throws in so many enemies and shotgunners and grenade launcher enemies tend to stagger you pretty badly up close, it's often better to bypass challenging shootouts entirely. The game tells you where to go too, so you can just run past everyone and shoot the occasional enemy. This aspect of the game feels like another aspect where the game was rushed out the door. Snipers can also be grating since they kill you in one hit and it often revolves around know where he is located and killing him before he gets a lock on you.
Now the story itself is kind of okay, it feels more like a lost episode of SAC than a geniune anime filler episode, it even introduces enemy tanks which 2nd Gig would feature heavily and it has stuff involving mirco machines, and you learn about a previous case Togusa was on before joining Section 9 but the way the story is delivered however is...questionable. Cutscenes are fine but when the the game uses in game voices lines to deliver information, it can get irritating. Getting shot at while characters are saying plot vital information at you and having the game take away control from the player and having the characters say their lines and the continuing on with the levels makes me wonder if the game was better off not being a third person shooter. There is a reason why codec calls in Metal Gear Solid games take control away from the player and have the player character be in a "safe zone" when the conversation is going on, it makes it easier to pay attention to the story. It was teetering on the edge of super silly when Motoko was getting into an argument with a goddamn tank while the player has to avoid getting shot at and getting a game over. How am I supposed to pay attention to what is going on while this is happening?
Overall, games like GITS SAC on PS2 is the reason why I tend to be lukewarm on licensed anime games, they tend to be made for people who are fans of the license rather than being a good game first and foremost, if people want to bash an adaptation of a media franchise for not being "faithful" enough and not being made by "fans", despite being okay this game and anime licensed games in general is what I point at to show that belief is super flawed. It's worth trying out if you are a GITS SAC fan and have a curosity for it, for people who want a good game? Skip.
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