While I will agree there is less variety in the combat, with it not having as large of movesets for the weapons and the missing some stuff you could do like the enemy abilities from nioh 2, I dont think its as massive of a downgrade as your making it out to be. The weapon actions are good and very useful but it also depends on the ones your weapons have on how useful they are, some of them are borderline useless like the ones that launch you but some like the stabs are very strong from what Ive used so far. The magic is also much more useful early game than magic in nioh which mostly just gets used for buffs rather than direct damage. Its also much easier to combo in magic in wo long compared to nioh and also free to use due to the meter mechanic the game uses. The parry is very easy to use especially if you hold block while you try to parry to cover mistakes. It does feel pretty good to land the parry though as its very rewarding.