This is why i play games.
Yes, the death system is in your favor. There is no punishment making things easy. But, anyone who is into games enough will not die very much anyway. So basically this is just put into place as to not frustrate unexperienced players. Whether this is a downfall or not is up to your skill level.
The game does plateau a bit at the end. While the scenery changes, you still fight the same enemies with the same tactics and weapons. In my opinion this could have been helped with shortening the game somewhat, as it is decently lengthy (longer than Gears Of War)
The hacking mini-game gets old extremely fast. It is not very randomized making it very chore like. This is avoidable though if you choose to spend money or autohacks to bypass the minigame.
Lastly, for game this epic, the endings feel a bit lacking. Im, sure everyone would agree though that this is a common trend nowadays and has become expected. As i said, there are few downfalls. And even these are in no way gamebreaking. So just buy/rent/beg for this game. It simply doesnt get any better than this. Atleast until Bioshock 2