"just adding new things for the sake of it without thinking what it implies on the overall"

Totally disagree, while not every map makes use of every mechanic, there's an attention to the player's abilities that makes things like shortcuts so much more interesting once you're willing to dive into the mechanics. The first map of the game has a shortcut section that seems inaccessible without a boost power up, but understanding the drift system allows you to reach it whenever. There's so much like that in the game.

"unlike in Guilty Gear +R, where you can clearly pinpoint the purpose of each element."
Brother they forgot to program half of Kliff's hitboxes. Zappa has a 1/3~ chance of getting random summons leaving blockstun that he can use to combo break. MOP loops exist. Ky/Venom are severely gimped due to meter restrictions. The XX series was a sinking ship where they constantly had to patch holes in the hull to prevent it from sinking, and the game turning out as well as it did is a miracle.

unlike French Bread games, where after the tutorial, all that's left is labbing for second priority details, like frame data, combos and tech.
The tutorial is shit, but don't pretend like FB has good tutorials either. One of the most common complaints about TL among new players when that game came out is that they had zero clue on how the shield system works. If anything, the two games have similar issues in that they present a bunch of information that you will have to know at one point in order to win, but deluge the player and assume that they'll be able to handle the rest.

70% of the stages are terrible because they were imported randomly from community packs with minimal effort to make them decent or to fit with the game's new design, unlike King of Fighters or any crossover fighter, which adapt each borrowed character from other franchises to the new system respectfully and gracefully.
1) There are some banger maps in this game, again, if you understand the system mechanics. They also look and sound great.
2) "any crossover fighter" 3/4ths of MvC2's sprites were stuff they had laying around since 1994, and even then they probably cut animation frames.

Overall, there's no reason to play this garbage unless you're unfamiliar with how the previous entry worked, so it's basically Strive!
I didn't play the previous game and after learning how shit worked, I was hooked. Also, Strive doesn't play anything like XX/Xrd, outside of burst and "spend 50 meter to cancel a move". Do you really wanna argue that Strive Elphelt is anything like Xrd Elphelt?

When you realize from the developers' lingo and actions that "fighting games" for them just means Smash Bros, it becomes clear why so little thought was put into making this. Most FG players wouldn't even call most of this "FG design" but "arcade design", though I doubt the devs have ever set foot into one in their lives...
1) I don't think you know as much about fighting games as you claim.
2) I wouldn't call it arcade game design. It's design that asks more of the player than what you'd be used to in other racing games, and rewards it with a sense of control and speed beyond its peers.

based