Got deeper under the skin of ND last night & played till 2am, which tells its own story.
The character development is quite different, with the options available at different areas of the base, Prosperity; and the main experience points mechanism is looting ethanol and bringing it back for the base.
There's quite a push to persuade players to buy Ubisoft credits to exchange in-game (and a melding of bought & earned credits, in order to blur the line still further, though they're fooling nobody). But the character progression is fine without any in-game purchasing. I'm only on level two of anything - with lots of progression to go - but generally I'm well matched to the enemy AI and the vicissitudes & dangers of the world.
As soon as you have liberated an enemy base, you have the option of taking it again from rock hard NPCs, with massive amounts of ethanol as your reward. First time I did it, it took me four or five attempts to win it back. I can do it again, but I don't know whether the difficulty is ramped up yet another notch if I do. There are plenty of side missions and no great pressure to plough through the main quest.
There is some absolutely rock hard fauna. Even the mutant warthogs are tough, and the elks have the skin of an FC4 rhino.
EDITED: 16 Apr 2019 14:21 by MANTHORP