Dialogue and pacing are two biggest offenders, otherwise it's the most competently made video game film with a tragically gross misuse of everyone's talents. The actors are putting in work, the music is constantly on point, the sets and costumes, (barring the black modern robes) look great, the cinematography is superb, and they absolutely nailed the heart of the series with lots of neat wink wink nudge nudge easter eggs. But the story has very little tension as the film doesn't allow any actors to breath since it's constantly going at a neck break pace. This leads to an issue where the character arcs feel rushed since they're trying to fit so much into a 2 hour film leading to emotional moments that are unearned, and then there are some incredibly awkward moments like the singing, the bleeding effect comes so incredibly early that it's really shocking but I suspect that they only planned three historical moments and wanted to touch upon that aspect. Another issue is the historical segments are never given room to breath because just as you're getting into them they cut back to the MD to show Cal mimicking Aguilar's movements for 2-5 seconds, obviously this is very jarring and it happens at crucial moments, the viewer will want to see Aguilar doing the majority of things without breaks. Ironically it probably would've worked better as a twenty hour game instead of a film but at least we can call it competently made, the stunts in this movie seriously look great and the one minute clips they released seriously undersell how well shot and edited the historical segments are. Or at least they would be if they didn't cut back to the modern day the second you're getting immersed in the historical segment which have a great sense of gritty realism to them. And the ending isn't really a cliffhanger it's just relatively terrible. The last twenty minutes are just not very good.
