I actually disagree with this pretty solidly - I've seen absolutely trash side missions like Dragon's Age 2 where a handful of dungeon templates had slices taken off of them and were repackaged endlessly. The NCPD jobs (especially the Assault ones) are cheapo quests - but they're placed interestingly in the world with custom prop work and differing tactical options. Depending on your build it may be more or less of "Just rush in with a sword" but viewing them as the random world encounters they appear to be created as makes them rather high quality in my eyes.
It's optional content for completionists or for you to trip over when wandering around and for that role I think it was well done.
I'm not talking about the gigs that you get from the fixers in the different regions. Those are interesting, they are mostly the same concept, but you can choose to go in stealth or rambo, and for many, if you scope the place well enough and have the right build, you can b-line to the objective.
I also thought Johnny was a really well executed. He really made me feel like some asshole is taking over my brain, and you slowly develop a bit of empathy with him and you can feel that he's doing the same with you.
Plus, the scene where you play a gig as Johnny is so awesome. I've never played a first person game where something like that was done. Looking out on that crowd of people, I really felt like a rockstar.
Yeah, the side missions were filler. And every NCPD job was identical. But they didn't feel any worse than Spiderman, and much better than FF7R (the cats...). You didn't even have to do any of them anyway. It was just something to occupy you if you wanted to run around and explore the city.