Prey really picks up in the second half of the game.

Bought it a couple of months ago because it looked like Bioshock in space and I liked the idea of mimics as a gameplay mechanic. I initially kinda liked it and played up to about a third of the game (G.U.T.S.) but ended up dropping it. Why?

1. Despite an intriguing start nothing really happened anymore for a pretty long while.

2. While the station itself and its little stories were interesting, the main story and its progression were slow as fuck. The entire first half of the game literally consists of going to your office, getting a video to work and taking increasingly long detours to get to your brother.

3. Said brother functions as the sole human kinda antagonist for a long time and is imo a pretty weak one. It's often vaguely implied he's an asshole but there's never really any strong motivation to want to confront him.

4. G.U.T.S. is imo the worst part of the game and can easily be the final straw for someone not sucked into the game already. It's long, a slog to get through and introduces an enemy that's mostly just a nuisance.

5. There were pretty much no characters. There's Yu (heh) and Alex and that's pretty much it for a long time.

I recently started the game up again though and powered through that first half and I can confidently say it was goddamn worth it. From the Arboretum on the game just becomes way better. Sidequest upon sidequest is introduced, living human characters start appearing, combat becomes more fun as you get more weapons and powers, enemies become slightly more diverse and the plot starts moving forward.

The game is also way longer than I initially gave it credit for. Part of why I dropped it was that I thought I was already through a portion of the game significant enough to confidently say it wouldn't change anymore but I was completely wrong. I'm about 25 hours in and I still don't know that I'm close to the end.

Also a tip but a very slight spoiler: there's a sidequest where you help a guy and he rewards you by granting you access to an allegedly resource-filled freezer while helpfully standing at the door waiting for you to enter. For anyone paying even the slightest amount of attention it'll be incredibly obvious that both the set-up and he himself are sketchy as fuck and you may be tempted to just kill him on the spot (you actually get a trophy for this). Don't. He ended up being one of my favorite characters and has far more of a presence as an antagonist than Alex does at any point in the game and I can't imagine the game being nearly as interesting without his constant ominous monologues every time you achieve something significant.

TL;DR If like me you liked Prey but got bored halfway through maybe hang in there, it gets way better.