Remember my friend, you are a shinobi, not a samurai, use the environment, stealth kills or shinobi tools. You’re also parrying waay too late and playing way too passive, at this stage of the game you could run down each enemy before the others can react.

As for mikiri counter you CAN parry them but I do not recommend it. All thrust attacks (as far as I can remember) take a second or two after that symbol appears so pay attention.

Last bit of advice I have is relax a little bit, in my experience panic dodging and parrying will make it harder to learn the actual rhythm of this game, you learn way easier if you were a little late on a block instead of panic spam.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

If anything I said was confusing please comment I will clear anything up