A soon as I realized that cells gate your ability to use checkpoints I stopped playing and lost interest. I don't find having to replay sections at that sort of scale gratifying in the slightest.
Hey just fyi there's an accessibility option to use custom checkpoints, and if you set it to "custom + progress" you can make your own checkpoints when returning power cells. If that's the only thing keeping you from playing more that might be worth trying.
