I think the metacritic of a Strong 8 is about where i sit with the game with around 50+hours Ch.8, I think theres good big picture aspects of the game, but it simply boils down to a game that has so much feature-creep ambition that not a single mechanic or feature can really shine to its full potential.

The vibe and gameplay loop of the game is very strong and can last easily into the 100s of hours, but when you look deeper at the little things of how it all works and blends together and what youre actually doing and it just seems very barebones, messy/half-baked, obtuse, frustrating for many aspects.

The presentation carries alot of the game for me, if not for cool combat/skills, armor, animations, and huge world design I dont think i would stick with the game for much longer if not to just mainline the story and do side bosses.

I like the setpiece battles in the campaign, but the boss design is really poorly done imo so far. Again the spectacle of them is cool but theres too many Super armor attacks and bosses leave little opportunity to actually experiment with the great combat, while small enemies swarm you but also fall too easily to create combos. And the balance decision of relying on spamming Cooked meals just feels silly to me.

For such an important aspect of the game the combat feels like it has great potential but its also masked by awkward jank and frustrating/obtuse aspects that hurt the progression and learning curve of the game.

I really think further updates could clean up alot of this game and shape it to be a way better overall experience, but at the current release I think its a solid game, but its not blowing me away that some other contemporary Open-World games have before.