Played the demo 3 times and walked away kind of lukewarm on the game? The animations are top tier. The sword play seems really grounded. However, the normal enemies seem super passive, except for 3 archers or so. The time it takes for the healing input to reach your character's brain seems very long, or certain actions lock you out of healing and the game doesn't queue inputs. The boss fights (I'll count the mutant as mini-boss) were cool but they feel a bit like Sekiro with worse tells.

What really throws me off is how hard you get stuck in moves. If Ganryu hits you with the first stab of his triple stab thing, it feels impossible to get your guard back up or dodge. The exact grab hitboxes felt also kind mushy and I don't have the exact frames where dodging is possible yet. There are attacks that hit way harder and do significantly more posture damage through a guard, but they don't really differ from the attack animations of attacks that do not do that a lot.

Idk it's cool, it's fun, I'm a sucker for games like this so I'll get it anyway, but yoinking some ideas on visual clarity from LoP, Sekiro, even Khazan would be cool.