Overall, not as bad as I was expecting but also not as good as I'd hoped.
Damage in this game is high, a counter hook is taking half of your head health every time it lands. Punch impact feels a lot better than 5 which I like a lot.
It's really fast, which if your coming from 5 is gonna feel awful tbh. Like you can string together 7 pieces in 1 second, and the beta only gives you access to Middleweight. Makes the game feel really overwhelming at times. Stamina is also nuts if you're not throwing body counters, you can throw over 100 strikes in a round easily and be above 85% if your opponent doesn't punish you.
Counter striking is really good, and distance management is rewarding. Becasue of the crazy damage, a counter 2 piece does a lot more that a 6 piece if you time it well.
Flow state is dumb, but not remotely as good as people think it is. If you go into a characters stat menu you can see their flowstate buff, and it doesnt make you faster or make all your strikes stronger. It targets fighter specific things. Like Bobby gets ridiculous round kicks or Pereira gets better hooks and overhands. I dont mind this, cause you can simulate a fighters best weapons with it being absolutely miserable to fight against the whole fight. That being said, good god the screen darkening has to go. Like 50% of the time you literally cant see your character because of the contrast difference, which makes it really hard to gauge range.
Footwork feels solid and fast. I dont lose matches often if I move constantly, cause your backwards movement is really important in this game. Lunges are a bit smoother, but the immediate action out of a lunge is tied to a perk which is kind of annoying. Outside striking feels really nice if you're good at moving out of the way of strikes.
HUD is trashy as hell. It does a good job at showing your health bars and all that but it looks really bad.
Animations are really good sometimes, and really shit other times. Bobby has really nice looking animations, Periera's are good sometimes and really bad other times. His left hook is great but his cross is rough man. Also everyone has Periera's calf kick, and it looks weird for some characters. A lot of the animations are new though.
I'm not sure why people hate the models. Periera and Dricus look great, and MVP and Bobby look fine. Khamzat still looks awful.
Perks are strange. They raplaced laser focus and fast hands with perks that still buff accuracy, but also buff power which is really dumb. That being said they reworked some perks and added some new ones which I like.
They changed the controls for kicks which threw me off. Now L2 + any kick button is a leg kick, and just the kick button is a body kick. Also changed the inputs for overhands and superman punches.
Those are my thoughts so far. I kinda like it but I need to feel how the lighter weight classes play when the game drops, because in the game's current state I imagine they'll feel awful.