Alright, I gotta get my criticisms of the first two missions off my chest. There is pretty much nothing good to say about the first two missions. 343's idea of a good challenge is to just swarm you with bullet sponges. The weapon balance is completely out of whack (there is no reason to use anything other than the needle rifle and heavy weapons) and the map design is some of the worst I have seen. 

How many circle areas where an enemy can pop in your blindspot at any given moment is 343 going to make? That sucked in the final fight of Infinite and it still sucks now. There are very few moments I can think of in Bungie Halo games where the difficulty stems from struggling to cover your blindspots. The challenge is almost always reasonably within your purview in the original games, or at the very least there are spots that can function as good cover while you figure things out.

The first two missions feel like the ending waves of a firefight match in a small space. I only played on Heroic and the entire ordeal of those first two missions had me puckering my butthole like I was playing Halo 2 on legendary, but significantly worse because it isn't fun.

Then I got to the third mission and it's... actually kind of great? The enemy placement felt more balanced, enemies are spread in a way that make then difficult but manageable and it's not a never ending wave of bullshit. Oh, and the checkpoints are reasonable too. The space part is great too, it reminded me of the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 (I honestly think a Battlefront style Halo game, if done right, might be one of the coolest things that Halo could ever produce). It's like a completely different team worked on the final mission. Does anybody else have similar thoughts or am I alone on this?

The difference in quality between the first two prequel missions and the third is honestly baffling.