Yes, but also, no.
Please allow this one to explain.
The game does not run smoothly on console. It doesn’t matter how new or shiny the console is. Whoever handled the middleware on the project, especially the last couple of years, has been, as Immortan Joe so eloquently put it, MEDIOCRE.
If you play on console, there is already a high basement level of jank. Sounds and actions desync all the time, frames drop, rendering is… comical if not lethal. Invisible enemies and flying weapons are the norm. NPCs slide while sitting towards you to attack, and assault while still in the napping posture.
Playing on a server isn’t always better because Internet connections can fluctuate in stability and the official servers are… well, we all know how they are. That horse is deader than the Wight Horse, no need to kick it more here. That’s another glue factory thread.
Now, in static camps,this is fine. Use the Skyrim solutions, scout while as sneaky as possible and shoot the enemy, or, already knowing the encounter lay out, pretend you played D&D in the 80s and use some tactical acumen. Once the jank is known, it can be accounted for.
Well, the baked in jank mixes with the new combat system disastrously. Not only do we have the seconds per frames and already baseline jank, but now enemy attacks all work like the giant snake, striking in a full sphere around the npc regardless of facing and any momentum from already started attacks. This one would love to get a video up of an enemy making the single handed sword advancing attack and pulling a 90° turn to home in like a guide clucking missile.
At the same time, our own attacks now have a much smaller hit window and have extremely reduced opportunity for correction. This one literally watches the pixels of their blade go thru the pixels of the enemy to no effect. We become locked in to an attack that was already a long shot due to lag. His is very bad.
Stunlock when enemies are basically teleporting or invisible is bad.
Hyper armour is a completely mess, but it always has been. Now it’s worse
We can use target lock, and probably should given the realities of console performance and the current system. But for whatever clucking reason, target lock prioritizes Fauns and Rabbits over people trying to kill you. Even if said non-hostiles aren’t even rendered in appropriately yet.
This would be manageable…
Except, everything new to do with Age of War involves mass combat. Where these cat @$$ trophies are on full display. The Purge and “Siege” are extremely memory intensive events with a good number of enemies. Just in time for combat to become as unresponsive and janky as possible. They all move with the control and correction of hummingbirds, while we flail around with all the grace of a garbage truck.
This one long ago accepted that our own enslaved minions, concussed into unconsciousness and then tortured into subservience would be, well, derpier than they were in the wild. This one knows a thing or two about both physical and psychological damage and it’s deliberate infliction. It makes sense and is immersive that our victims, if too broken to raise fist against us, are also too broken to function well in battle.
But from a game point of view, our own followers pick their nose or spasm their leg while even mid tier enemies engage in combos and home in like a drone strike on a wedding.
That’s the rub. The combat updates exasperate everything already wrong with the game on consoles, so while the changes aren’t as intense, they bring the whole experience to a wretched state.