OK, sorry about the double post but it has been like a week so I don't feel so bad
I have finished chapters 1 and 2 with Liu Bei and Zhang Jiao's story aka chapter 1
I feel comfortable saying that the open world rather stinks and isn't helped by the almost completely inactive AI and bugs.
The combat system isn't that bad, but honestly half the time I feel like I am actually button mashing combinations of square and triangle (I am playing the PS4 version) and having it lead into new attacks, I can almost string quasi unlimited combos it seems. I do kinda miss being able to pick exactly what kind of combo I want to do which I feel was easier in the older system but I don't dislike the new one.
I will admit my fears about attacking the same castle over and over again didn't come true, instead I am attacking the same tiny camps over and over again

which might be better, might be worse I am not sure.
Like some reviewers have said the battlefield is incredibly stretched out thus you can have some sequences that are really fun with tons of enemies and then loads of dead space dotted by tiny camps which are really repetitive.
I haven't done much with the crafting system, only did a little bit of hunting by shooting some tigers, 90% of which didn't seem to actually care that they were being shot with arrows unless I got close enough to pet them. Perhaps the next time I play I will try to look over what I have collected and see if I can make anything interesting.
I see myself finishing Liu Bei's chapters, and perhaps two or three more characters in time but I don't foresee myself doing much more then that. I might try to finish at least one character from each group, we will see. I foresee that the latter campaigns will involve less camp to camp fighting and more rushing to the end with minimal participation with the armies.
Oh, last thing, I have been having this occasional bug where I capture a camp and when I try to move on to the next one I automatically lose the camp I just took, thus I cannot take the next one as the army progression hasn't gone that far. I can head back to it where it will show me that it is a friendly camp but when I move away from it suddenly it is contested. I have to simply abandon that front and move on to the next one. This has happened twice so far, once near the end of Zhang Jiao's campaign and once near the end of Liu Bei chapter 2. Not sure if anyone else has had this happen to them. Not game breaking by any means, just had to go someplace else.
Also I find it kinda silly that as Liu Bei I had to talk to Wang Yun and join with Cao Cao to trigger the story of chapter 2. Why am I started south of Luo Yang anyway? Also I didn't pursue Lu Bu

I beat up Zhang Liao and Lu Bu just left. I did beat up Dong Zhou though, he didn't take long to beat, Zhang Liao, heck even Xu Rong gave me more trouble.
"If you can't drink a lobbyist's whiskey, take his money, sleep with his women and still vote against him in the morning, you don't belong in politics."