And? It's a much worse game, in my mind. If the critics overlook the multitude of flaws, that's on them. The issues abound.
Maybe if you are only considering the combat and ignoring:
-the bad/plain open world level design with invisible walls everywhere, lack of landmarks, weird gating and complete lack of signposting
-the weak visual design (grey!) of most enemies coupled with the bullet hell nature of encounters, making combat/enemies difficult to read in many instances
-the terrible camera and forced perspective sections (overhead camera during a 3D boss battle! Yeah!!)
-the sidequests which are nothing more than boring travel followed by easier than average combat followed by more boring travel
-boring travel
-poorly paced story beats (the reward for boring travel!)
-incredibly poor moment to moment gameplay except when not in the open world (which is like half the game)
-very sparse open world with very few things in between checkpoints
-repetition of content, and not in a good or interesting way, but in a "I bet you want to see the rest of the story" kind of way.
I could go on. It's maybe a 6/10 if we just consider design. The combat could not save it. If I'm being honest, it would have a much more effective linear charcter action game with a quicky moving story between combat and linear level chapters. The open world brings the entire experience down significantly. It seems like something they did not care about, even though it's like 50% of the game
I completely disagree with about everything you've said.
Let me elaborate a bit:
-the bad/plain open world level design with invisible walls everywhere, lack of landmarks, weird gating and complete lack of signposting
I personally quite liked the compact world design, which is similar to the first game, but with more connections between multiple areas. The time it takes to enable you to fast travel also helps create a sense of familiarity with the areas, I quickly knew how to navigate in the entire world and the shortest path to each area without needing to consult a map. Each area has its distinct landmarks, and the main area has a pretty considerable event that will become an obvious landmark.
I also like the little stumbles and things like that that make traversal a little more involved than just holding forward. Dodging shit so you won't trip is not exactly amazing gameplay, but it's better than doing absolutely nothing. Each area has its own stories to tell, its own visual and musical identity, and it helped me to establish a good connection with them.
Can't disagree about having a lot of invisible walls, it just didn't bother me that much. Even Witcher 3 has a few places where the game will force you to turn back. It may be more elegant, but it's still an invisible wall. The map is just much larger and it becomes far less noticeable. But as someone who isn't that fond of huge maps, I'm ok with it.
-the weak visual design (grey!) of most enemies coupled with the bullet hell nature of encounters, making combat/enemies difficult to read in many instances
I was actually very worried about the enemy design from watching trailers and presentations, but I think they did a wonderful job in creating enough visual and mechanical variety, while still keeping the same core theme. It worked on its favor, and the "generic stubby machine" is just as much of an iconic character in this game as any other. I do understand your opinion on that, though.
On the other hand, I completely disagree and can't see how enemies would be difficult to read. They borrowed the "eyes flashing red before attacks" mechanic from Rising, and there's no cooldown between dodges. If anything, it's a bit too easy to avoid getting hit.
-the terrible camera and forced perspective sections (overhead camera during a 3D boss battle! Yeah!!)
I think this is an important part of Nier, and I was very glad to see they kept that. There's nothing undercooked about it, though there's also nothing wrong with thinking it's terrible. But surely you can see how that's nothing more than different tastes, rather than an undercooked game from a tech and design perspective?
-the sidequests which are nothing more than boring travel followed by easier than average combat followed by more boring travel
The quest design is indeed very basic, can't argue against that. It's all about how much you care about what's happening in them, and how much fun you have with the core gameplay. But the quest design itself is indeed just fetch quests, with few exceptions.
I also agree that the difficulty balancing is bad. It's my biggest issue with the game, by far. I wish there was a difficulty mode that just disabled leveling so they could balance each encounter with a fixed player level in mind.
I don't think traveling is boring, however, and even the combat having balancing issues, I still think it's very fun and well made. There's a lot more depth to its combo system than people give it credit for.
¯\_(ツ
_/¯
-poorly paced story beats (the reward for boring travel!)
Can you give an example? I think the narrative progression of the game is just brilliant, and the way it touches its themes and reflects on the game's world and humanity as a whole, making the player think and draw conclusions by themselves is quite remarkable. And then later in Route C it goes all out with its story, after the mostly relaxed pace of the first two routes. I think the pacing is excellent.
-incredibly poor moment to moment gameplay except when not in the open world (which is like half the game)
You're just listing the same issue multiple times using different words at this point.
-very sparse open world with very few things in between checkpoints
Yeah, it's great, isn't it? I'm much more fond of world design like this with more meaningful content here and there than just going around with things to do all the time, stopping every 3 steps to collect herbs. Thankfully they unlock some chips later on that makes even getting loot more automated.
Oh, and speaking of loot, the itemization is much better, too. Even with the broken difficulty balancing, the weapons you'll find (in fixed places rather than RNG chests) will be much more useful at any given moment than most loot in other RPGs. Getting a new weapon that will be useful throughout the entire game is a much better reward for exploration than getting gear that is too high level at the moment, and by the time you can equip it, your current gear is much better anyway.
The materials you gather also reward your time with just the amount of sidequests you pick up and can instantly deliver, but there's nothing unique about the way this game does it.
-repetition of content, and not in a good or interesting way, but in a "I bet you want to see the rest of the story" kind of way.
Also completely disagree with that. The repetition of content always serves a purpose, and brings something new to the table. And in ways that wouldn't have the same impact without experiencing it from another point of view first.
But it's an understandable complaint, I've seen more people with this opinion as well. Again, nothing to do with being undercooked, it's just not your thing, and that's fine.
We can spend hours listing issues we have with games other people love, but that doesn't mean they're undercooked or whatever, come on.
