It’s beautiful, and often really engaging both in gameplay and in story/setting, but I’m already feeling a bit of puzzle fatigue after ~20% through the game. I’ll see how far I’ll continue.
Yeah the cloaked enemies mission was also the highlight of chapter 1 for me. The far more interesting visual design of the area, the unique enemies and the mission design*. It was cool. But still disappointed that the ol’ invisible enemies stage was the highlight of an entire chapter :P. I expected a lot more from FromSoft.
There’s no contradiction there. You are required specifically optimize your build for the difficult boss fights -and- play with Sekiro-like skill. The game is clearly designed like this. And while I’ve never played any of the previous AC games I agree with OP that this feels Souls-like, with stamina, poise and everything.
The combat is fine perhaps. The main reason I don’t like AC6 is because there’s nothing interesting in it except the boss fights. It’s the blandest FromSoft game I’ve ever played. Elden Ring kept me enthralled for a 100 hours until I got all achievements, trying to explore everything. An afternoon of AC6 I started to wonder why I was still playing, when after each mission or boss there’s just going to be more of the same.
As a massive Dark Souls fan, AC6 is not even a very good Souls game. No deep lore and story, no beautiful scenery, no exploration at all. Even the bosses aren’t as good, because DS bosses can be tackled in various ways (melee, ranged, magic, many cheese strats) while AC6 bosses are designed to only let very specific builds succeed, which is incredibly boring. I honestly don’t understand the hype.