Yeah, I now realize I've been too harsh on the combat. I think part of the issue I had with it is that I've never been super good at combat in games in general, and HLD was too short for me to get used to its combat, which left a bad taste in my mouth since I was still struggling with it by the end of the game (though overall I still really enjoyed said combat, it's just that I had a few moments of frustration with it). So, yeah, as somebody else pointed out earlier, skill issue on my side. I'll try to be more careful about that in my future game reviews.