My experience so far has been mixed. I'll start with the TL;DR and say that if you decide to skip this game, you're not missing much. Might want to wait a month or three to get rid of the absurd login queues and see if NC$oft adjusts the game to be less horrible for the western market.
They've done a decent job with the Wushu atmosphere, plot isn't bad by MMO standards. One clever thing I haven't seen before is NPC thought bubbles during conversations, which could add a lot if the whole thing wasn't 100% on rails. There are no options, no decisions to make, not even an illusion of choice. All you get is "Yes, I'll do it! Me, me! Let me!" eager puppy responses.
Character creation is okay even for a modern game. Bunch of body and face sliders, quite a few hairstyles (some of which aren't horrible) but no choosing idle animation, run style, fighting style or anything like that. Outfits are each more hideous than the last, with asymmetric garbage and weird ornaments. Suffice it to say that Korean aesthetic seems to be vastly different from my own. Zero customization with clothes: what you get is what you get, from neck to toes. Clothes have no stats, however, so that's a definite plus.
Combat is supposed to be actiony, yet characters move around very slowly. Sometimes it's possible to dodge enemy special attacks, sometimes they just spin around and autohit no matter what. Not very difficult, kind of slow. This probably changes later on, but movement speed has received criticism from higher level players as well. Health recovery is painfully slow even out of combat, so it's best to burn the enemy fast and do inventory management between harder fights to keep a tolerable pace going.
Quality of life considerations are mostly absent. If something is helpful, it has an excessive ingame currency cost. Do a quest and want to teleport back to a settlement? Sure, you can - but it'll cost half of what the quest pays out. Forget about buying potions and healing supplies from NPC vendors. Weapon upgrades are done by sacrificing drops to "evolve" the weapon, at least until the process hits RNG wall with a loot wheel dealie handing out necessary components... or not. RNG. There are two of said loot wheels and only one player can use one at a time, which adds another pointless annoyance with waiting and indirect PvP. Weapons wear out and need to be repaired at campfires, using consumable repair tools.
Apparently mail and wardrobe need to be bought from the cash shop. Outfits are unlocked per character, not per account, and cost in the $10-15 range from the look of it. Whether it's store-bought or rare drop, each character needs a new one. Very greedy and alt-unfriendly. Also only two character slots without buying more, deleting one takes a week and the name is locked out for a year.
Channels are full of goldspammers, non-premium players have massive wait times in login queue, typical launch mayhem takes place and it's back to queue again.
Oh, and Take Dik Bling or whatever decided to have his name plastered on the screen in the opening cutscene and in another spot later as executive producer. In a MMO. The guy has ego issues. You know, the CEO.
