Melee combat is indeed getting a bit repetitive. I'm hopelessly underleveled and underequipped and can still beat the crap out of some of those berserkers like the main gate guard or that tavern keeper.
It takes forever but jumping past them is a pretty safe and stamina-saving alternative to rolling around in the mud. And as long as you don't use strong attacks you can stunlock them with your attacks most of the time and then press Q when the HUD says so. Turns out that deactivating target lock solved all my problems.
So I ran circles around a few low level mobs which made fights piss easy. Didn't try to fight anything higher level than what I think is called horn wolves outside the town though. But so far the AI seems like a lost cause.
And videos like that fight against that mutant giant that was posted 2 pages before make it look like a travesty. You couldn't run circles around enemies in the Gothics. Target lock made sure of that. Here you can deactivate it. Which seems like a piss poor idea now because the AI looks like it's still the same.
I still enjoy the game but I think I have to take back my first impressions about that combat system. It's indeed rather shit.
The world building is good for what it is so far (I could do without magic tbh, also factions seem to be there because reasons not because they actually make any sense), dialogue is servicable but a joke compared to Witcher 3 (but what mainstream game isn't), and the art is all over the place. Those forest soil textures give me eye cancer, a lot of stuff is really low res, colors are nice, atmosphere too ... every human NPC is a clone, but guys look good, then again women are fugly and behave in ridiculous ways ... is everyone working at PB a grand wizard? Seems like it.
Will explore the wilderness next. I really hope that mobs there pose a challenge again because I doubt that the story alone will keep me hooked. It's not bad so far but the different elements don't really click together.
Well, the character progression is nice so there's that.
...
Whatever,
mods patches will fix it!