That is a good point. When free-roam is done right, it can be fun. Man of the house is still one of my favorites.
But far too often it's not done right. This is a great story with beautiful models, that has been ruined by the fact that it's free-roam. So much development time has been spent filling out a world, rather than just telling the story and delivering content.
I can't be arsed even playing this pirated version, I certainly wouldn't support it.
Look at the game
WMV, a 0.1 game, and in its first release, it delivered more content than this game has in over a year.