Disclaimer : I am speaking only of my experience as a melee player, great axe fighter.
The combat is great, I love it however I often feel, while fighting (both in pve and in pvp, but particularly in pvp) that it’s a little too “square”, a little to “step by step”.
In short, and maybe because the last MMORPG I played was a fast paced action one (Black Desert Online), it really does feel clunky to me, there’s no “flow”.
You ever watched a poorly directed, poorly written, poorly acted action movie? You know how when they fight, the actors stop, after each movement, for a short time? Like, they punch, and then wait there for the other actor to do something? Or when it’s their turn in the script to get hit, they sit there, waiting for it, with their hands shaking? You know what I mean right? It just makes the fight look fake…
Fighting has to flow, it just does, otherwise it feels fake, mechanical, scripted, like a fast forward version of a turn based encounter.
It’s not a huge thing, I know it isn’t, it’s not game breaking, not at all, but would it be such a huge thing to improve as well?
If I were a critic in a respectable magazine or online blog or whatever, I would praise the New World combat, in many ways, but I would have to conclude with the notion that it is clunky. Really clunky. Which reduces (at least for me) how much I enjoy it and how much it inspires me.