I had a similar feeling about Three Kingdoms. I loved the changes they made to diplomacy and "spear vs. cavalry" balance being done in a very novel but genius way that I wish they copied. And I did like that they gave options where you could either play with the "Romance" mode where it is over-the-top "Hyper-General going Dynasty Warriors on the enemy" or you could play "Historical" mode which made it more traditional.

But then every DLC seemed to causes some issue with the game, the DLC fell flat on its face compared to the base game, and CA said "Oops. We are killing the game now and stopping support. Lol, Lmao."

It is amazing to me how far they have fallen since even just a few years ago.