It's definitely not made to be Dark Souls/Nioh/Sekiro in terms of combat, it's closer to being Assassins Creed or Far Cry, though much more grounded and a little more thoughtful than those two. For me, the combat was not the thing keeping me interested, and that's fine. I was more than happy to just travel from POI to POI since the world was so beautiful, and the little samurai challenges were neat (bamboo cutting for example) and the duels were super cool and cinematic, even if the combat wasn't particularly deep.