The game's combat system is fun, but it doesn't make up for the mess that the rest of game design is.
To start off, I'll say that story has no impact on my rating, because I don't care for it.
Overall, i think the game combat is great, but the rest of the game implementation if awful.
On another note (just something to keep in mind) the game is starting out as a pay to win game. Don't get me wrong, I have no evidence to support that money can buy you (significant) power in the game yet, however, materials and HP potions being sold in cash shop is never a good sign.
Generic Features
The game has some features that will undoubtedly aid you (for instance price history for items, inside the game), however, some of the biggest flaws of the game stem from lack of common sense, greed or maybe just laziness when developing some of the features.
To give you an example in one of first areas of the game you get to spin a wheel for rewards (by the way the spins are not limited if you kill for tokens). Good, right? NO! The wheel can only be used by 1 player at the time and there is like 3 second cooldown between each spin! Speed of your clicks and your ping decide whether or not you're the one who gets to spin.
Ok, that's just 1 feature though. What about the rest of the game? Well that depends a lot on how you play. Do you play 1 character or more? If it's more than 1, prepare to be amazed! Your characters are as good as separate accounts. You DO share premium membership (thank god for that at least), however, everything else is completely separated. No shared bank, no shared wardrobe, no shared achievements and to top that off: Cash items that you pay for cannot be traded within account (that includes outfits by the way). That means if you want to use that rare premium outfit (from buying a year worth of subscription) you have 1 on another character..... WELL GOT GET ANOTHER ONE! You can live with that, you say? Great! Just don't forget that the items that ARE tradable cost money to transfer to your other characters...
Also, if you want to customize your interface, or rebind your keys (granted individual key binds may be useful), you will have to do it on each character.
Gameplay
To begin with, I'll say it starts out slow. You will notice that you have no skills at all when you start the game. Starting story is mandatory and unskippable.
As you do the first quests / tutorials you get the ability to Windwalk/glide and few of your basic skills. Chances are this game will seem horrible to you until you level up a little, because with basic skills you get combat is just slow and doesn't feel like there's any skill involved in it.
Only when you level up to 6-12 (depending on your class) you will finally get enough abilities to pick up the pace of your combat (And if you're an assassin execute the legendary Plastic Bag Jutsu!........ *Spoilers* It's not real T_T *End of Spoiler*)
Combat
Combat is the only good thing this game has. While there are 8 classes to chose from (at this point), and your choice might change your experience, combat is amazing on all of them (except for destroyer, I have no clue how they were accepted into the game...) in its own way.
Conclusion
I have no doubt that you will enjoy the combat in this game, however, you've played a decent amount of MMO games, the design of some of the features will probably bug you.
I'm giving it a 3/10 because:
The Good
+Great combat (many points for this one)
+Cosmetic customization: reskinnable weapons and outfits that do not affect stats.
+Can buy cosmetic items (cash shop ones) with gold.
The Bad
-No link between characters, so everything (Achievements, Wardrobe, Storage, costume share, cash item share, etc) is per character. Publishers confirmed they are not planning to do it either.
-You will NOT beat people with just skill in open world PvP - Equipment makes all the difference, which is sad considering the game's nature.
-The game has a some technical issues that are attributed to the engine (developers/publishers are not showing any intention to fix them): some visual glitches, drop in frame rate, to as low as 10fps, in larger events (on powerful PCs), some bugs that will prevent you from playing certain areas until game is restarted, etc.
-Game "anti hacking" protection picks up software like razer synapse (main configuration software for razer peripherals) and locks your account for it... You can get it unlocked by appealing to support team but expect it to take a few days...
-A lot of bots everywhere and the developers have no clue how to handle them.
-Current end-game is just grinding (a lot of it) for weapon upgrades.
-There's little value in high tier equipment, because it has no effect in arena and only thing you do in PVE and Open world pvp is grind for high tier equipment.
-Cannot buy premium with gold (at least not safely). This is not my concern, but considering they made exchange system to trade gold for cash currency, excluding premium from that currency shop seems unfair.
Quick update: I've played the game for a while and sadly, the list of flaws increased and the list of good stuff didn't really change much.
- Login queues are no longer a problem.
- Game publishers do not have plans to link characters, storage or wardrobe in any way. As for cash costumes they said there would be an item (single use) to send cash costumes to another one of your characters.
- Community is toxic at least on 2 of the servers I've tried.
Another update:I've recently logged into the game to check out the changes over the year (none of issues above are fixed, except for getting some content) and I later found out my account has been locked after that visit.... for the 3rd time now..... B&S is the only NCSOFT game that has THAT many technical issues in 1.