The playtest of the game that came out today feels so much better than the early leaked pre alpha builds. The gameplay and trick animations/transitions for the most part are much smoother than the past three Skate games, the grabbing feels weird, and delayed but I'm guessing that'll be fixed in the final product. It still feels floaty but much better than the earlier builds. The map (if this is what the final product will be) is a mashup of some of the old Skate's previous spots with various New York/San Francisco spots and neighborhoods.
It seems you're gonna have to be online all the time to be able to play, similar to Steep. I don't understand why modern games do this but it's one of the most annoying tropes in modern gaming today. There's a battlepass like progression/reward system it looks like "get to X tier to get this item". I think they're gonna monetize that in the same fashion most games like Fortnite, etc. do being able to buy tiers to level up. With it being free to play I already don't have a good feeling about the game as a whole, but the gameplay itself is pretty good. I think it'll be a good game but not an exact following in the foot steps of the past Skate games.