You can't slaughter armies anymore, but if you understand the battle system and tank your character you can kill 10 guys. This game is about defense, positioning and being cautious with your strikes. The key is to not get surrounded. If you get surrounded in this game you are fucked. You will need multiple smoke bombs to escape a surrounded situation.
That + the stealth makes things like smoke bombs and beserk darts actually useful for once. In the past I would just shoot or run in and counter kill everyone.
I'd like more progression in terms of enemy difficulty though. I think killstreaks are fine if it's against the lower level enemies, whereas with more difficult ones you couldn't pull that off and have to fight as it is now. And like I keep repeating, the fight system would benefit from being able to switch weapons on the fly like in AC1 and have each weapon have its own tactical advantage. Having your own weapons break could be cool too, if you could fall back on the hidden blade(s).
I imagine these kind of scenarios:
1- Fight someone sword to sword, but yours gets broken.
2- Switch to hidden blade, and disarm him, stealing his sword.
3- Being disarmed and scared, he moves away while others move in to outnumber you.
4- You fight some, but soon the top ranked enemies come in.
5- Switch to chain-blade, swoop most of the ones close to you off their feet.
6- This gives you the opportunity to throw a smoke bomb and escape.
