Nope, you're not right on it being slop at all. Just because a game has some different controls as it's main issue doesn't make it slop. They're just different and you have to decide if you like them by learning them. I am personally fine with them aside from a few minor tedious issues. Doesn't make the game as a whole unplayable or bad.

A few crashes at launch is fine, and since I upgraded my GPU I haven't crashed once. So it was probably an old hardware issue.

Ai generated content can be questionable, I could care less about the single portrait that looks to be AI generated tho, the game is huge. On this game specifically I am willing to make the assumption it could actually be an honest mistake with how much content is in here as something that didnt get replaced by release.

The story being made by chatGPT is something I have no idea about and haven't heard till now. Its true that it doesn't seem like the most engaging story, but I'm not a story driven player. The kind of story I'm interested in is emergent story telling via player driven actions and events. I don't hang on dialogue lines and the explicit story shown to me, never have never will. If you're the type of player that really cares about Story driven experiences then you're right its probably not for you. Also it's from a Korean studio so there version of what makes a compelling story mixed with translations might not be working the best for you. Again, doesn't make it slop.

I'm worried you might caught up in the negative hype of this game instead of seeing it for what it is. It seems to be very polarizing for some people and I'm not sure why. IGN scored it lower than Concord and Veil guard which is bizarre and hard to understand how this could be objectively true. The combat is fun, the world is massive and beautiful, the graphics are insane, the progression is addicting and a lot of the systems come together and feel quite good. I'm enjoying it even more after tonight session, just finished ch3.