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This is going to be quite a lengthy and detailed review.
I bought this game when it was on sale, and I've been hooked since. It's a very fun game, with a high skill ceiling, without being too difficult to grasp the fundamentals of. This is very much a skill-based fighting game, and doesn't really play out much like a traditional BR. There's advanced movement tech, the combat flow is super addicting, and beating someone will always feel satisfying. Your first few games will have some bots in them to ease the new player experience. I initially thought this was kind of lame, since I'm not a fan of versing bots in a PVP game, but I found the bots to be very helpful as a new player, as it introduced me to the basic fighting 'loop' or 'flow' of the game.
The difference between bots and players is very noticeable, and at the start you're going to think this game is quite easy, or basic on the surface. Skilled players who practice combat and movement tech can outplay their opponents 1/2 or even 1/3. While it can be dissuading at the start to get completely stomped by these players after dominating bots for the first couple of hours, sticking with the game and learning the mechanics is definitely worth the time, as the barrier of entry to learning these mechanics is actually very simple.
Once you get the fundamentals down and start getting the hang of focus dashing, attack cancelling, and parrying/dodging - the game really opens up. There are lots of incredible guides online on YouTube which are very helpful for new players to understand the rhythm and flow of combat, and even putting in a little bit of time practicing these movements and tech made the game vastly more enjoyable for me. You soon realise that the game is made up of quite small technical combos and movements, and highly skilled players are just incredibly good at chaining them together. Once you get those small 'combos' and movements down, like Focus Dashing, crouch cancelling, and parry cancelling, then you naturally string them together, and soon you find yourself in a lot more control, beating a lot more people.
The game's combat is based off a rock-paper-scissors system of attacks. It basically looks something like this:
Charged Attacks (Focus) > Light Attacks
Light Attacks > Parries
Parries > Charged Attacks (Focus)
Throw in ranged weapons, unique hero skills, and a dodging mechanic, and what we get is a simple yet nuanced base combat loop which rewards control, prediction, and reaction. A lot of the fights come down to predicting what the other player may do, and making decisions off that. If you know a player always does a Focus attack after their Light attacks, you might predict their next chain and get a crucial parry off, turning the tide of the battle. You can react to what a player might do, like dodge out of their attack and make a huge play off of one clutch aerial combo. What you get is a very 'cat and mouse' like combat loop, where players are constantly poking and testing one another, waiting for an opportune time to strike or punish their opponent.
There are solos, duos, and trio game modes, as well as some other casual game modes like Bloodsport (TDM) and some PvE and PvEvP ones. I can't speak too much for the casual modes, as I mainly play the ranked ones, but Bloodsport is a good place to warm up and become familiar with the weapons and mechanics of heroes.
There's a decent variety of weapons available, and they each have their own unique playstyle. There are small strategies and approaches you'll need to consider when versing each weapon, which further adds to the depth of the game.
Contrary to popular belief, I found the servers to be quite populated, and have never waited for more than a couple of minutes for queues, with near instant queues around peak time. My favourite game mode is Solo's, however the most popular game modes are definitely Trios and Duos. For context, I play in Australia, and connecting to the SEA node I get about ~100ms, which is very playable. There's only been a few times where I've died to ping related issues, and those could have been mitigated if I had played better.
The first thing many players complain about is the abundance of Chinese players in their games, regardless of whichever server they're on. While some of these may be Chinese players connecting to the server from China via a VPN, the majority of these Chinese named players are players within the region, using Chinese characters in their names. This game is massively popular in China, and is somewhat of a cultural phenomenon amongst Chinese diaspora around the world, and as a result, the best players and meta usually comes from that region. So we get a lot of people who want to presumably imitate the level of players over there, and use Chinese characters as their IGN's via Google Translate. In my ~100 hours of playing this game, I can confidently say that I haven't played against anyone with a Chinese name who has a terrible connection, or even lost to another player due to ping differences.
If you're into highly skill-based games, with plenty of depth for both movement and combat tech, then I highly recommend picking up Naraka. I consider myself a pretty competitive person in terms of the kind of games that I enjoy playing, and I haven't had this much fun learning, and grinding out a game in years. If you're picking it up, my advice is to stick with it and really learn the mechanics and fundamentals of the game, and not to get demoralised or disheartened when you lose to a better player, as I guarantee you that learning the game is not as hard as it looks. The barrier of entry s(kill floor) is actually quite low with learning the tech and fundamentals, and once you learn the basics of movement and combat, you really begin to enjoy the game. On the other hand the skill ceiling (maximum potential, or 'skill') is quite high, with skilled players being able to easily punish and win fights due to their proficiency with combat and movement, and knowledge/prediction of what players might do. If you have any doubts, I'd recommend picking it up on sale, however I would gladly pay full price for this game having experienced it myself.