I love the concept of the game and it can be rather satisfying at points, but areas are disappointingly samey (aside from highly contextual gimmicks) and the basic gameplay is just that, basic, to the point where it kills my drive to go on very often. These factors make starting a new run after death a miserable endeavor instead of the new beginning that it is in many other roguelikes.
What I've said so far probably sounds much more negative than my rating does, but I must emphasize how wonderfully novel the concept is and how engrossing it can be when your resources are running dry and you make a clutch, last moment escape. There's a huge amount of untapped potential here, though having more in depth moment to moment gameplay would risk fracturing the game too hard in an Aztez-like situation, but at the very least more interesting level generation and more deliberately constructed level pieces could've gone a long way.

The "campaign" is a true case of mustard-on-ice cream, but the arena mode is very solid and is really all that'll ever come to mind when I think about this game. For all intents and purposes, the arena is the main game or at least can be treated as such, and it's hard not to think of it that way with a combat system as rich as this one. The real killer for the system tho is how absurdly easy it is to rack up an infinite airborne combo that no enemy can knock you out of. This complaint is bigger than it sounds for people who aren't really into character action, and smaller than it sounds for people who are. On the one hand, it allows for basically any enemy to be effortlessly killed once you have them launched to a reasonable height (barring some that can break free), and it renders point/combo challenges essentially meaningless as the last enemy in an engagement can be infinitely juggled midair for the aforementioned points or combo score. On the other hand, the challenges are essentially meaningless outside of the board game mode, and there are a good few enemies that can break your midair combo, that is until you get out of their vertical range, at which point it can already have been called a reasonably interesting challenge. On the other other hand (that I keep in my back pocket in case of emergencies), this is super dependent on the engagement, and a good deal of encounters don't have such enemies. Outside of that, the gameplay is extremely solid, with a wonderful selection of ground and air moves that are satisfying and intuitive to master and chain together. Weapons are mostly balanced and distinct, some are arguably more satisfying than others but the fact remains that they, as all the best weapons do, bounce and combo off one another in interesting and varied ways. The enemy design is extremely tight as well, though some enemy variants look unfortunately similar in silhouette. A bit of a shame, as each enemy does have a defined and important role in a combat engagement which itself is great, though it would've been greater if you could more easily tell them apart. Regardless, certain enemies demand certain attack or evasion strategies, some force you off the ground, some force you out of the air, some should probably be parried and, well, yes good they're good I think I've made my point. Overall, if this game doubled down on the action bits and had a defined action campaign - rather than a bizarre rouguelite board game campaign - it could've been excellent, and it almost pains me a bit to say that it isn't. But at the same time I'm reasonably happy with what we got.

Very ambitious combat system that is excellent in so many ways but chained down in a few others. Most obvious of which is a campaign that consistently puts 3's worst moments to shame and this is such a notorious issue that I don't even feel compelled to elaborate further. There's also the case of boss fights that have a HUGE range in quality from a couple that are really great to a couple others that are boring tedious bullshit. The enemy design is sometimes on par with what the series has seen before and since, not to mention one enemy type that is arguably the most enjoyable to fight in the whole series. For the most part though, too many enemies are just dull to fight on their own, and taken as a whole the roster is pretty lacking and gimmicky. Moving on, Dante's weapons are a bit awkward to use unless at the highest tiers of the skill ceiling, but once you reach those heights it's really excellent - provided you can actually find an interesting and well-designed combat encounter to use your skills on, because most of those are brief moments buried in larger missions, or deep, deep into the bloody palace.

With all that said yeah pretty fun I guess.

The main issue with this one is that the victor in a combat situation can be almost mathematically determined. If one person has more health/shield than the other, that person will almost ALWAYS win the engagement. if that's equal then If one person has a superior gun at the range of engagement (rifle for long shotgun for short, etc) then that person will almost ALWAYS win the engagement. If that's equal, then the person who saw the other first will almost ALWAYS win the engagement. If all that's equal then sure, use of cover, game sense, and aiming skill will be factors but most of your time in rounds will focus sharply on optimizing the first few things I mentioned anyways. This can be empowering since a lot of the time, you'll still make it reasonably far in a round due to tons of people taking high risk gambles early on and dying out. It's certainly gratifying to know that "oh wow I did better than 80% of the players!" but what I'm trying to say is that there is absolutely no reason that me, someone who is to this day pure ass at aiming and movement in other shooters, can consistently make top 20. So few of the choices I make that bring me there rely on skill or strategy, and therefore are essentially meaningless. Furthermore there's absolutely minimal room to express the skills that do play a factor, since it really boils down to aiming skill and mastery of a movement system comparable in depth to moving a cube around in a void in blender. Many other shooters make even that more interesting by having not only alternate movement options, but making the higher damaging weapons projectile based instead of hitscan based, and just about everything in fortnite is hitscan, surprise surprise, lowering both the skill floor and ceiling in one fell swoop. Not only this but the exploration and resource gathering that will give you the edge isn't hugely interesting either, being just mildly entertaining at best, boiling down to finding a location and systematically walking into every room and destroying floors and walls. Sometimes you find something, sometimes you don't but the point is that there isn't really much to it. All in all Fortnite is a bunch of shallow boring ideas executed in a shallow boring manner, wrapped up in a package that I can't really call high quality.