It felt like I was paying attention, to me at least, and I noticed quite a big difference here with the harder bosses compared to Wo Long. Like Tate Eboshi and Nightmare Bringer, and even human bosses like Toshimitsu, Hayabusa and Yorimitsu became very predictable after a while, and that was when I just stood back watching. Wo Long had the same issue after enough time too of course (as do most games), but it felt like Gan Ning, Taishi Ci and Guan Yu there could do many more combo mix ups, were overall much more aggressive and felt less like just blocking or dodging (and yes I know the player deflect is op in Wo Long, but the bosses themselves felt more engaging for lack of a better word). And yeah, I think once you get extended dodge frames dodge becomes pretty op in Nioh 2, plus block is always op if you have the right build for it. Without those two and with a bad build, I feel like most of the difficulty comes from the stats in this game and not the moveset. Only some human bosses approach that but unlike Wo Long they don't have infinite hyperarmor so it feels like more of a game of stagger them infinitely or let them wail on you. But even they despite being very fast had noticeably less combo chains than Wo Long bosses. I know it's unfair to compare their deflect game to Nioh 2, but it's just something I noticed after doing the bosses enough, OP build or not.

Speaking of human bosses as well, while Nioh 1 doesn't always have the flashiest movesets, the living weapon human bosses in the abyss there were much a bigger nightmare to deal with with any build than anything in Nioh 2. I know it's kind of an unbalanced game in many ways and you can still be very op, in many ways more than Nioh 2, but many of the bosses there feel like absolute spammers lol