I had basically the same reaction to MD’s energy system during the first hour since it isn’t explained all that well, and most of what you use in the tutorial are the chunky abilities with large upfront energy costs. Dishonored’s system certainly isn’t perfect, but it’s the best I’ve encountered so far at striking the correct balance between restricting the player and enabling them. In fact if anything MD’s implementation probably errs too far towards the enabling side, since you can trivialise much of the game by investing in cloaking and all the energy bar upgrades and ghosting through levels from cover to cover. An energy bar that fully regenerates is a very dangerous thing.