It is. There is very little change from City. A few new enemy types, but nothing even remotely as gamechanging as shields or knives, or thermal goggles and body armour. The martial artists are a neat little addition, but mostly they actually just draw out the fight and kill the flow, as you have to counter them - wait for it - 5 times in a row to actually "counter" their move. Meanwhile every single enemy either stands around doing nothing, or beelines for that SMG you haven't destroyed yet. Sigh.

Also they added some gloves you get later on which, when charged and activated, let you attack through shields, tasers, body armor, anything and everything. These gloves kill the combat system. I hate them.

The Riddler(Enigma) puzzles are mostly gear-checks involving "use gadget x on thingy y, you win". Yes, there was this in City as well, but there were som really clever puzzles hidden around. There are fewer of those tricky ones now, and more that are just "run here when you've gotten this upgrade and... just kinda... pick up the thing I guess". The best ones involve finding ways to fly to something that's seemingly out of reach. Unlike Yahtzee I love the grapnel accelerator-divebomb glide system and they make good use of it again.

Bossfights are really good. All of them. We've come a long way from Asylum's single real Big Bad-encounter in the yard. This they nailed.

You get rated after each encounter and based on some qualifications you get one of 5 grades, which provide an XP bonus based on how well the game thinks you did. This is fine in fights, its basically what it always was with a little spice, but in Predator it kind of annoys me. One of the strengths of City was the improvement of Predator when you got spotted or did something stupid. The AI would notice your tactic and actively counter it (grenades in vents, shooting down vantage points, ignoring distracting batarangs etc). So being spotted gave you a chance to disengage and take the fight from a new angle, but at a disadvantage. This lead to many situations where I'd have 1 health and no vantage points left and would have to somehow break up 4-5 dudes with a Jammer among them - and that was awesome. Now if I do the same, the game tells me Im worthless and gives me a big XP penalty. Nothing gamebreaking, just... kind of annoying. I mean... you lose the "unseen" stat required for max rank if you're seen in any situation *ever*. But I want to scare the bejezus out of that last straggler who shoots at random noises in terror. And I do this by landing in front of him and making him flinch before I shatter his ribcage (they added the Asylum-bonecracking sounds back in, they're pretty... unnerving. I like that. Not sure thats good.). This used to be a bonus move. Now its a penalty one. Long rant for small things, it just slightly maimed one of the series' strengths in the stealth gameplay and for no real reason.