Does movement and combat suck or is it just me?

[Nebula Eclipse]

So I don't have hundred of hours in the game but I feel I have enough, I beat it once after playing full on during release and started a NG+ recently. I've been enjoying it but I'm having issues, some which I had hoped my NG+ would fix.

First is just movement, it feels so... Ass. I don't know, I don't like the dart/dash system and it having so many things, especially like the zombie leap, tied to it. I know in DL1 it was the same but because of darting it takes like a solid second for the game to decide if you're darting, dashing or stopping both by clicking/holding too fast. In the middle of a T4 night chase its super painful to just have the game go "hey you had full stamina but now you're grabbed because I thought you wanted to dart when landing." It just feels super clunky and jank. So yeah, I've tried to learn it and what I'm guessing is I have to re-press shift everytime I land from a jump or anything to start dashing again or else I just lose speed and get eaten.

Then theres combat, zombie combat is okay, fine enough. Virals are a bit more of a headache but its more knowing when to dodge to the side or backwards and waiting for these advances. I keep getting spear tackled but thats mostly cause I get so sick and bored of the fight I just M1 spam until its done. Human combat though?... Just kill me. Its so terrible. The tracking and dodging is awful, I just watch my models clip through a cornered Renegade because "oh he dodged bro" and I get it, just 'wait, grapple, hit, repeat' but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ its so boring. I want to fight but each one takes a handful of minutes because theres groups and they're all expert pit fighters, even random bandits are.

Compounding all this is the global level system, I hate it. In DL1 there was difficulty and it scaled more-so in the zombies you'd find and fight, I liked that and if at any time it was too hard or easy, just change it. This feels like Oblivion where enemies are scaled to you so you never have that "I've improved massively" feeling, you can get new lackluster skills to do different things like spamming out the whirlwind but its like at level 1-1 with a 20 damage table leg I'm beating common infected five times to kill them, at level 7-3 I'm slicing them five times with a two handed flaming broadsword, it just feels like theres never that moment where you start having fun and slamming away whole crowds like in DL1.

So yeah TL;DR, movement feels super slopping, having to guess if I'm dashing or darting and flopping into zombies is painful. Combat is a trial of patience as enemies dodge everything. I never feel like I 'get stronger' as the world scales in level with me which ruins a lot of the fun of working to level.

[Munchies]

Its just you ...

[Zalgrodhal]

I think that some of the aspects of movement, parkour and combat are better than in the previous title, BUT the impact of the weapons, sounds, physics and ragdolls are much worse. No xray either.

Constant grabbing, leaping and knockdowns are extremely annoying and need some tweaking.

[FluffyPinkDecoyBunny]

I think I've topped about 3 hours - just a little after the intro - for the game. Only reason I stuck it out that long was because my younger brother (who paid for my copy and his copy) wanted to play the game coop.

When I had to fight the first humans in the tunnel area and you had to go up against 3-4 of them at once....I knew the human combat was going to suck. They all dance back and forth and only come at you one at a time. All you do is parry to stun them/knock them off balance, hit them once (or do the stupid vault and magically dash in midair in some completely random direction for a vaulting flying kick) and then they block your next attack....then you parry, hit once, they block, then parry, hit once, they block.....repeat ad nauseam.

Then the rapid draining of stamina as you try to parkour - that's a gross change from the first game.

Having come from playing the first game before I tried out DL2, it feels like you're trying to run through about a foot of water when you're running. It feels slow and when you jump it feels like low gravity because you just kind of float and I still can't get used to it.

Then you get to the part where you have to fight infected and I'm thinking, this will be cool. Out comes a "special" viral zombie that does these stupid high jump and instant lock on to you.....you could run and dodge multiple directions and the stupid thing stays auto locked and changes directions in mid air and still hits you....that's just f'ing stupid. Then the basic zombies are slow, but as soon as they get into melee range they instantly grab you and now I'm stuck spamming the F key to break free. Break from from one and the other 3 around you, one of them grabs me and I'm spamming the F key again.

Then I find myself swinging at their heads, like you would in the first game, and it felt like I was using a plastic wiffle ball bat wrapped in bubble wrap. It didn't matter where you struck them, there was not solid feedback from the combat.

I told my brother the game felt awful compared to the first and the combat sucked and I didn't even want to do the intro anymore and asked if I should just refund the game so he got his money back. He asked me to finish the intro so we could try the coop......

I finished the intro and he went through the intro and we both put around 30 minutes into the game after the intro trying to get used to the game and then we had issues trying to connect for coop. We both have around 3 hours of game play and we couldn't get his money back for a refund and now my brother is pissed.

We're patiently waiting to see things improve with every new patch that comes out, but right now I'm not hopeful.

[Nebula Eclipse]

I swear theres an issue with hit detection for the human fights, I'm getting slow-motion feedback AND critical hit ignitions on thin air because the guy I'm fighting "dodged" so my weapon leaves a flaming ball of nothing where he was 'hit'. I think there is something actually wrong with the dodging system on enemies as its triggering on-hit criticals that are missed?

Also to add, I miss the momentum in DL1, Crane would have like a small delay to his movements and stuff and while that sounds bad, it felt far more smooth and flowey especially when chaining parkour, Aiden full bore runs as soon as you press the key like an anxious child and usually ends with faceplanting into walls he's trying to round.

[CT MA Beast]

I think it feels too clunky and not smooth at all. Not sure why so many people love the parkour and combat compared to the first game.