Keep in mind guys this game was originall for 3DS while the cruise games were for Wii.
Naturally many things that worked on Wii quite fine had to be changed for this one.
The no-dashing thing is something more system related I believe. Since you have no SP gauge and it gets only filled up, implementing a dashing wouldnt've worked.
But apparently they do speed up if you keep running, which is sorta like dashing. Also some strong words are SUPPOSED to get you faster. (Not really feeeling it though but I'm ok with the way the speed is).
Um yeah the combo system. It's different. Naturally. But I feel like I can do something for the very first time with Luffy that wasn't possible in the Unlimited Series. Air Combos!
Which is kinda cool. So yeah it needs more time to get used to it. But I didn't have the feeling that there are too few combos I can do.
Actually I keep discovering new ones. They're just harder to pull off.
As someone who loved the cruise series I feel it's something totally different. But I can't tell it's bad. It just really needs sometime to get used to the new elements introduced and old one's being removd (for the sake of the new ones).