After wrapping up around 20 hours of Just Cause 4’s story missions and having plenty of destructive fun blowing up everything in sight, I went back and reread my review of Just Cause 3 from 2015. This, I thought, explains that déjà vu feeling. With a few exceptions, that review covers everything you need to know about Just Cause 4’s strengths.

It’s just as gloriously over-the-top and action-movie ridiculous as the last game, but it doesn’t introduce any must-have new ideas to give it its own identity. If you’re keeping track, this marks the fourth Latin tropical despot that Rico Rodriguez—the secret lovechild of Wolverine and a flying squirrel who’s also a secret agent—has set out to depose. The story is almost completely twist-free, with the dictator showing up only at the beginning and end.

If I were a supervillain with a weather-controlling machine, I’d like to think I’d make more creative use of it. The new weather effects are visually impressive, but they’re underused and not very fun to play around with when they do appear.

It’s not that there’s nothing new in Just Cause 4. For one, the map of the island of Solís feels just as expansive as Just Cause 3’s Medici, without being a direct copy. Like a great filming location, you’re never far from beaches, jungles, deserts, snowy mountains, and everything in between. The urban areas are a bit bland, but outside of that, the game checks all the boxes for what you’d want and expect in an open-world game.

Liberating the map comes with a fresh spin that addresses one of my main complaints about Just Cause 3’s repetitive propaganda-destroying missions. Nearly every province now has a real mission tied to it. Sure, you’ll repeat most mission types, but the variety is a significant improvement.

I was, however, disappointed by the conquest map. All you really do here is confirm, “Yes, I took this over,” after completing the mission to unlock the rewards, and the enemy never attempts to reclaim any territory. The unlocks are mostly for airdrops, which Just Cause 4 uses to cater to your every destructive and playful impulse. Want a tank? How about a fighter jet? No problem. All the military hardware you could want will literally fall from the sky.

Instant gratification is a theme here, and it works. Just Cause 4 wastes no time giving you access to your parachute, wingsuit, and grapple—everything you need to wreak havoc across the island. Absurd as it is to perform stunts like completely avoiding fall damage from any height by grappling the ground and pulling yourself toward it faster than you’re falling, it’s a fantastic mode of travel that’s unique to Just Cause. Using it also requires a bit of skill.

One of the big new features in Just Cause 4 is the alternate grapple modes, but they’re more of a physics novelty than a meaningful gameplay innovation. Sure, they’ll likely lead to a million goofy GIFs, but the attachable balloons and thrusters aren’t particularly effective in combat, and they’re rarely used in puzzles. The super-powered retractor, on the other hand, is still the ultimate weapon. You can instantly tie any two objects together and watch them collide until one—or both—explodes. It’s as hilarious as it is overpowered.

That said, combat in Just Cause has long since ceased to be about challenge. Rico can take an insane amount of damage and heal just as quickly, so most of these battles are never really in doubt. Even though there’s some decent enemy variety, the AI is little more than a punching bag. However, the moments when the enemy throws everything it has at you are when Just Cause 4 feels most sensational.

Across the board, just about every weapon has an alternate fire function, which usually makes up for the lack of grenades or placed charges. Most guns come with something at least as destructive, and the sticky mine launcher fills that role nicely—though it’s not easy to come by. That said, I would have loved to see Just Cause 4 push the destructibility even further than Just Cause 3 did, but it doesn’t really.

Just Cause 4 has everything you’d expect from a Just Cause game—almost to a fault. Compared to Just Cause 3, the improvements are widespread across its beautiful world, but generally minor. So, while blowing up yet another dictator’s army provides the same mindless explosive fun and physics-based comedy the series is known for, it doesn’t really integrate the new weather systems or grapple mods into combat in a meaningful way. As a result, I’m left with a distinct sense of “more of the same.”