The bland cadets ruined it, they had nothing to distinguish them from each other. In turn, this made the jaegers feel even more bland.
In the first movie, each pilot had a certain trait which distinguished them, each pilot also had a matching jaeger to go along with their personality. Ex: Cherno Alpha in the original.
Lastly, the jaegers feel like bags of lays potato chips. If you‘re going to make the jaegers stupidly fast then you need to compensate by making the jaegers look bigger or sound heavier.
Do something! Give us a view from inside a building, on the street, give us something big like a ship so we can have a reference point, ANYTHING! Don‘t make people look at the jaegers from far away and at eye level of the jaeger making them look even smaller and weightless.
Besides that the plot was nothing home to write home about, it‘s a robot vs monster movie.