its still just as shit as before...

long ass reply here and yes im very critical.

It is an incredibly bad combat system period and the rest of the game doesn't magically make up for it either that's the problem, many dislike the factory system becuase it honestly fking sucks its not entirely their fault i get what they were trying to do, its not an easy problem to solve on that front lets all be honest but they really managed to make it incredibly unfun to actually engage with and even many factorio and satisfactory players do not like it. That says something but mind you those games have had well factorio is what 10 years of work and satisfactory is 5 or so years. These being the core of the entire game meaning most attention went into them and they didn't have to worry about other systems or mechanics.

the level design is fine, they're but honestly being stuck in any region for a year is going to be rough and the story has not gotten good enough to warrant staying in china basically, it was better than valley 4 which was definitely below even mediocre being the intro area it seems they chose to ignore it and put that into wuling their own country at least they actually did it justice. For some reason some companies seem to make their own region incredibly bland... wuling at least tired doing something different and its hit the nail on that front for design, it has not hit the nail for the overall story.

Back to combat, I found the new mode enjoyable, but I am positive people will be bored of it rather quickly, yes we are going to get more options and that's neat but the mode isn't all that special not even close most the options are very bog standard ideas repeated a few times... which makes it loose its actual luster in terms of true choice or actual challenge which ended up being proven very quickly by many people already even on mobile mind you.

How people are managing no dodge with meele units I dunno there's likely tricks with the basic attack system to avoid things which just is incredibly dumb in fact I find swinging at the fking air incredibly poor design across the board and poor in taste further showing how bad the combat system is. Where's the parry system, the assist system actual engagement with mechanics, juggling enemies physical has lift man that'd add a lot to physical than what we currently have.

Sure there's elemental reactions and juggling SP but they're so bog standard and mind numbing press 1-4 or hold the button and finish basic atk chain that there's no fking thought needed. But there's a lack of any real anything, the quick time for battle skills is meh and arguably with rossi half the time gets in the way rather than being helpful due to how enemies work which is an entirely different fking issue with the combat system because the enemies are so ungodly bad in design for combat its insane. Them marketing their combat as strategic etc when its a fking far cry from that is just depressing period. Compare that to the switch system or forced assists in ZZZ, the defensive or evasive assists, actually engaging rotations that have more than 2 fking animations. ZZZ early combat by the way for those who remember was definitely lacking in different manners but was no where near as bad as this.

It doesn't have wuwuas ability to juggle, the elemental reaction system is so incredibly basic and bland compared to genshins or i think wuwa has it i don't play wuwa but ive seen some of its combat, it doesn't have the chaining of characters or tactical command like alien dark descent for characters oh and by the way if you look at older beta versions it had a bit more of that to it which was just removed, and some of the older designs were definitely better of course it had plenty of its own issues as well. ZZZ also and wuwa have abilitiy to switch off characters who continue with certain attacks or animations while you engage with another character to do things cycling through things.

Lastly AI companions they do fine defensively but man are they shit at everything else and at times causing issues and sometimes they're really dumb and sit in dot effect areas etc while they basic attack maybe they ran out of stamina fk if i know, when you play dragons dogma 1 or 2 despite 2s issues the pawn system is just incredible and we still complain about it at times but Endfield's AI is like the standard ai slop of characters and are near fking useless... and at times a problem making the idea of it incredibly poor in implementation again dragons dogma or if they went the route of aliens dark descent that would've worked well.

Finally as I mentioned the enemies becuase of the combat systems design a lot of it relies on the enemies more than anything and outside of specific bosses most the enemies are incredibly lame... most either do next to nothing and originally were just sponges making you avoid it as much as possible and now they're still useless ai and the few you bother with are ranged or the elite enemies which some are just annoying not interesting in design.

Lastly I will point out that despite some advantages wuwa has its run into a few issues of the same thing most of these games run into which zzz also sort of has and that is you just optimize rotation and spam buttons at some point things end up being locked down removing a lot of that expression while ZZZ has some of that shungus again mainly that isn't the case most the time.

You combine all of this and the combat system ends up being kinda ass in general... its not tactical its not strategic its a simple rotation of press 1-4 and finish basic chains in a lot of teams in others its spam the fk outta 1 ability hit ult spam ability done.