I actually liked the change of direction in general, with the game going from a Zelda/God of War lite hybrid to a frenetic third-person action-adventure romp -- the combat in particular I found to be rather enjoyable. My key issues, however, are that the loot system was clearly designed around the possessed weapon concept, rendering most of it useless (not unlike Blizzard designing Diablo 3's loot system around the RMAH), and the game is simply too big for its own good: while the first two worlds are generously sized, the quests are utterly uninspired and repetitive, requiring copious backtracking, and the latter two worlds are comparatively tiny. The campaign ought to have been limited to two larger worlds in an effort to flesh them out more, and another six months in the oven at the least wouldn't have gone astray. Also, most of the skills on offer are useless; there's one in particular that claims to lure enemies to attack your summoned ghouls rather than you... but it's of no importance as this is the default enemy AI behaviour. Oh, and there are bugs aplenty,
some of them game-breaking and virtually none of them patched; the last update was
three weeks after release.
The chiefly dull loot combined with the poorly-conceived skill tree means that even if you're enjoying what the game has to offer, you never feel as though you're improving your character in any meaningful way -- again, not unlike Diablo 3.