I don’t have any general complaints about the combat. A lot of specific ones though. Going through my first play on Normal and a few things are irritating. Flying enemies are never a good idea. Flying enemies where I only have melee characters is worse. Flying enemies where the AI wants to do nothing but run in circles while my attacks have a 10 second wind up and whiff every time. Or the materia I have equipped is the wrong type so even hitting them with a Fire doesn’t matter. Just a lot of little annoyances like that. It gets better as you get better but running in to that stuff detracts from the fun factor and hurts my interest. Compared to other pure action titles or even ARPGs. At times it reminds me of Star Ocean, sometimes a Tales game, maybe a little DMC. But it isn’t the good parts of all of them + some turn based goodness on top.
I’m glad to have played it though. Avoided it initially because it seemed like there was no way I’d be happy. But I’d gladly buy some DLC having now played base for free.