Characters wander in and out of the story with little logic, the Dominion plot line just kind of trails off, and all of Starfleet vs Starbase 1 was kind of silly.
But Shaw is an amazing character, Vadic is fun to watch, the TNG crew got a far better send off than Nemesis, and the acting is fantastic. The fanservice of seeing the Ro, Shelby, Moriarty, and the E-D again was also fantastic as someone who grew up watching TNG with my dad.
Oh a good character- or even actor coughmichaesheencough can absolutely elevate. And like you said, damn, that proper sendoff Nemesis denied us.
The main issue i have is it’s got the common problem witha lot of Kurtzmann treks (and into darkness) - cherry picking the high notes from the franchise, then misusing them.
Reusing trek threads can be amazing - what voyager did with Borg lore, hell, what WoK did with space seed! but there needs to be actual solid progression and daaamn did it fail. The fallout of the dominion war is something i would love to see handled properly, especially the implications of the fall from ideals under duress DS9 ran with. But Picard didn’t deliver. And as awesomely horrific as that Giger queen was, it was all sizzle very little steak.