I’ve been trying to explain this to people for seven years, the true gameplay loop doesn’t actually work until you use hard mode. On medium mode it doesn’t matter how well you do the executions, you still get the rewards, but on hard mode you need to carefully (and rapidly) make decisions about which buff you’re aiming for, and it changes the game completely.
I assumed at the time that reviewers wee just playing on medium mode and thought that the game was just incredibly simple and easy, and that hampered the review scores. If hard mode had simply been used for medium mode, this would have had a bigger following due to the difficulty and speed of thought needed in combat.
I try to convince friends of this, and they won’t try it again