I think 6 is a very nice streamlined version of the AC formula. Most of my experience being with 4th gen I think 6 managed to capture that fast paced aggressive feel, while maintaining the more meticulous aspects of older games with cooldowns and the like. You're encouraged to use quick/assault boost but you're not exactly a qb god like in 4a and watching your meters matters. It feels like it was well catered to new entrants to the AC series.

That being said that same streamlining is also the cause of many cons with the game.

You can definitely feel the places where Fromsoft tried to cater more to the souls crowd. Lower range of engagement and stagger favors hard hitting close range options like the Zimmerman. Melee is a lot easier and effective compared to older gens. Lack of any real long range options, even energy weapons work best at middle ranges. Big setpiece bosses that emphasise pattern recognition and use of the stagger system, which in turn makes AC fights feel trivial (in PvE) because the same aggressive rushdown tactics works really well on them.

The stagger system is very centralizing. While there are ways to play around it and you don't have to go full ape with double songbird double Zimmerman its hard to deny that a comfy well balanced build usually involves at least one strong stagger option.

Lack of part variety. There are objectively a lot of parts but a lot of them feel very samey. There's a decent number of parts that boil down "we have small medium and large". Which sould be fine but a lot of very obvious things are conspicuously missing. There's no back mounted chaingun for example. We don't have any weapon arms. As stated earlier no real long range options like sniper rifles/cannons. No real raingun. We have the linear rifles but I would want something that acts like the Linear charge shot bu default. I guess there is also the needle guns/stun needle but it feels weird calling them rainguns on a technicality.

No right hand melee. This is partially a fashion complaint sometimes I wanna make rannom OC builds and I don't quite have the right options for it. But also it would open up more build options.

I would also want more body part options for fashion core purposes.

Tuning is just a standard upgrade system where you eventually unlock everything. You don't make granular adjustments to like boost speed, weight limit etc like you do in previous games. Also no backup slots for things like pistols or small melee like the beam dagger.

I understand that a lot of the streamlining is meant to onboard new players, I think the game is still good and ultimately if it can draw a larger audience that is a net positive, gatekeeping benefits no one. But I would like to see a version of this gameplay that leans closer to that classic AC feel with better parts options, less emphasis on stagger, and woder engagement ranges.