How bad is the gameplay?

[MindfulOcean]

I've had my eye on this one for awhile, but the common complaint that the dungeon crawler portion of the game is terrible has me worried. Is the combat worse than Nep Nep or Conception? That's about as bad as combat can get before I just can't take it anymore. I love visual novels and science fiction, so I'd really like to be able to play this game and enjoy the story. Thanks!

[Shuno]

It has a very simplistic real time combat. At the very least it doesn't waste your time. You can run past enemies as well.
The easiest difficulty completely removes all enemies from the game, but I honestly wouldn't recommend it.
Exploring dungeons is fun and combat provides necessary feeling of creeping danger, I feel like the story loses a lot without it.

Third and then fourth (after it unlocks) difficulties are optimal imo, just the right amount of challenge, also higher difficulties have much higher chance of rare drops.

[J-Kitty]

People complaining about this dungeon crawling game... being a dungeon crawler is one of those "you are PLAYING the wrong game" moments in my opinion. If you don't like dungeon crawling games you shouldn't be playing them expecting them to be different.

Nevertheless, as the other poster said the combat is fairly simplistic and quick. You can attack enemies and if you are quick about it you can retreat before they get a counter in. The higher difficulties add more tension to the game but, give much better bonuses exp,item, and SCORE wise. This game however is about getting your lovely little characters offed in new and interesting ways so be prepared for that. Each unique death makes them stronger overall and makes them more resistant to another death from that action (so if you get bludgeoned to death once that character is more resistant from bludgeoning in all successive clones) You can usually haul ass around enemies if you ever get into a situation where you are about to be wiped out and there's always the "emergency exit" that they so willingly hand you.

Will you spend time grinding in this game? Yes. Especially if you are trying to give yourself an edge in the later chapters/difficulties. But, it's nowhere NEAR as grindy as conception was. There is a bit of RNG to getting specific key items but, even then it's not tragically deplorable RNG.