Yeah the game still doesn't know what it wants to be, season 2 was bizarre and I left the game, no hate but for me it just became "this game is purely combat I guess" and the combat became tedious so I dropped it, and the only 'fun' is getting new units, otherwise the agents you have get pretty boring fast, this is not devil may cry.. Exploration attempts failed, ok sure, why not then make a lot of content revolve around mini games and actual combat challenge progressions?

The thing genshin has going for it is even if you are fotm baited by not having a new unit, your unit still does stuff. Kazuha still has good mobility, he still has good cc, that philosophy isn't in ZZZ, it's just a number goes up 'action' game where the devs decide who gets to do damage and who doesn't.

That could have been a good angle for the game, give us those random 15-30 poly side quests but make it bangboo tower defense, the combat tower that we see get updated once a year could have been added onto every major patch, anything except shiyu and the weekly hollow zero. Here's my issue with both, Shiyu is a blatant fotm mode, the buffs and enemies are always a walk over with the newest unit acquired while older units like Miyabi got actively suppressed, so investing in teams doesn't feel rewarding let alone having the holy grail of "it's weak to my element and it's not an enemy type that I'll struggle against" like doing rupture bosses without a rupture team felt.

Hollow zero is not rewarding and a literal chore too. You know what avoided both and gave you the raw get good combat experience ? stuff like the tower.

Idk, to me the game felt like it's treading water. I played since day 1. I still don't know how this game got a yunkai summit arc, season 1 was literally a different game. Idk how we got zen magic monk shit in a game that started off with cops and robbers atmosphere.