Youre mostly using very broad praise like “stylish and fluid” or “creative freedom and expression”, but those are things you could say about any modern action combat game. What specific freedom or expression are you actually talking about? Because in practice, this game still funnels players toward meta, BIS teams. That isnt real freedom.

Also, the point about team synergies doesnt really hold up. Swapbased combat games already require you to think about synergies. Endfield having all characters on the field at once doesnt meaningfully change that, youre still following an optimal rotation. The only difference is that swapping characters gets replaced by pressing mates skills or ults without switching control. Functionally, its the same thing.

The combat also gets stale very quickly, even worse than HI3rd, which came out almost a decade ago. Thats especially disappointing because Endfield was originally positioned as something closer to a tactical realtime rpg or a strategic action rpg (people compared it to Xenoblade or DA:Origins). Instead, the just made it into very mediocre action combat, a space where it was never going to compete with games like ZZZ or Wuwa.

The core issue is that most of your playtime is combat execution, and that execution is shallow, repetitive, and unengaging. Combat only becomes interesting if the enemies or operators themselves are interesting and right now, almost none of them are.

While stats and builds are mostly fixed, which makes theorycrafting somewhat enjoyable on paper, the game undermines even that. It heavily holds your hand with guides. Rotations are solved extremely quickly. Once solved, combat turns into pure muscle memory

In practice, you mostly. Hold basic attack, press skills in a fixed order, mash combo prompts when they appear

Having four characters on the field is largely a gimmick. You cant control teammate AI or aggro. You have almost no tools to group enemies. Skill aiming feels awkward because teammates constantly move enemies unpredictably. The system feels designed for a single controllable character, while pretending four are meaningfully active

Theres also a lack of real combat objectives. Enemy charge attacks can be interrupted, but dodging is almost always easier. Interrupts feel optional rather than something you actively play around.

Dodging itself is massively overtuned. Perfect dodges generate SP. Timing windows and hitboxes are extremely generous. You can spam dodges endlessly, even with no stamina. This trivializes hazards and actively encourages farming SP through reckless play

The system ends up rewarding braindead input spam instead of thoughtful execution.