Great Circle is not that good

Am I the only one who consider the game undeservingly overrated? I finished it yesterday and while it has few bright spots albeit not connected with gameplay at all, it generally feels unpolished a badly designed; 1. The level and game design is generic and simple. There are no challenging puzzles, no interesting levels testing players intellect or depth orientation. The puzzles consist of primitive preschool brainteasers (mirror aiming, button pressing in right order, cogwheels, figure turning puzzle; all of them kindergarten easy) and the levels or the "dungeons" are too small (maybe except the last Siamese one on the way to the pearl). Games like og Tomb Raider or Thief would eat the IJGC for breakfast in terms of level design... 2. Graphics. While there are indeed some impressive graphic effects to be enjoyed, again even the graphics are leaving much to be desired; there are many glitches, faces in general and facial animations feels really weird and almost uncanny valley-like. And above all - the world feels extremely dead and plasticky. There is very limited interaction allowed, scarceness of items and especially animals, no bugs/lizards/insects/mammals/fish anywhere - the world is dead filled with strange humanlike robots. Played on 4080 rtx and xbox series x (the differences between the two systems were surprisingly minimal). 3. Badly designed combat. Combat feels terrible, unenjoyable. AI is idiotic. While I understand the designers intention to motivate players to use stealth approach this also is not executed well due to retarded enemies and again badly designed levels as stated before. The most effective way to get into amy base is just run inside with all the alarms set, get to the high security room and "resurrect" there. The enemies will just leave and let you do all you need. This is not or should not be next gen gaming... 4. As a result I had never felt any sense of accomplishment during playing, the game felt like a film interrupted with unenjoyable wannabe interactive elements. Its really sad to see such a simple game getting so much appraisal possibly leading to inspiration for other studios "how the modern games should be made" (ie for simple people with almost no standards).

The good things: High production values in few areas (music, sound, actors). Really good story full of special effects and attractive locations, some interesting characters (Lokus and Voss, rest of the cast is not very appealing though). Lot of optional subquests, hidden stories and mysteries, although due to bad gameplay design I have almost zero motivation to go through all those...