I am the opposite. Timer adds urgency and it makes the player choose wisely on how you want to go about doing a mission. And the story for this game is pretty meh. All lot of people see it as heart wrenching as you say it but it never really felt like that. Half the time I have no idea what's going on and the other half is like we attack here because resources. Its like it trying to do what Ace Combat did with its lore regarding Ulysses but drops the ball because it is trying to hard to make everything look bad.

AC7 seemed to do a much better job on creating atmosphere for the player. Especially in the last arc of the game. And it goes about it on a more grounded level.