My honest answer is that the combat isn't the highlight for me, personally. I think it is fine, and it can feel really good at points, but there is.. like this disconnect between button presses at times. I feel like it has improved since release, and it really is hard to put my finger on it, but I can say that Souls/Dragon's Dogmas combat feels better. While in Crimson Desert, it feels off at times.

To try and put it more clearly for those interested:

I feel (in my own playthrough, I could be an outlier since combat isn't something I go out of my way to do in this game and actively avoid it for now) that during combat, my character doesn't follow where I'm leading with my analog stick on my controller. Say I'm surrounded fully on all sides (happens often enough in this game, sometimes causing a Warriors-esque feeling as I'm actively hitting 4-6 people at the same time with my blades) and I want to attack the bigger guy who does more damage behind me. Sometimes I'm sitting there pulling the analog stick towards that guy, but my character will hit a different guy off to the side of that bigger guy. This leads me to getting hit by the big guy who does the most damage, seemingly against my own wishes since I was actively pulling the analog stick to attack that specific guy.

And some more info for those interested in the combat, sometimes when I'm in the middle of combat and with how the controls are (they were pretty complex at release, but they have been fixing those issues alongside other pain points I've mentioned in my previous posts) it leads to a lot of "wrong" actions being taken. If I try to get complex with the combat (which I'm sure is a ME issue since I'm nowhere near the level a more seasoned Souls player would be), I make a mess of the whole thing and get hit more often than I would like.

TL;DR:

If you are expecting to be in the middle of a heavy attack and want to be able to cancel the attack animation for a dodge roll, that will not be what you get. Once you commit to the attack (as of right now on 3/31/2026) you aren't going to cancel the animation and dodge. What normally happens is that I roll AFTER the attack.

I will also do some combat when I get home today to be able to answer these types of questions in more depth and detail. :-]