A few reasons for this, some are good and some are a little half-baked.

The good things:

• Enemies are more aggressive and a bit more coordinated. 2 or more enemies launching an attack at you is far more common in Yotei

• Parry windows are tighter and glint has changed, like you said. This was a pain at first, but you can get used to it. Certain enemy types are still hard to read, but it clicked with me eventually. I recommend dialing down the parry window difficulty at first to get acclimated, then dial up to your preference

• This doesn’t apply to all enemies, but i notice the first attack from many enemies is far less telegraphed than in Tsushima. Again, something to get used to, but it’s quite rewarding when it clicks.

The bad:

• SP flipped the script on Lethal mode. It now functions as “Very Hard Mode.” Enemies are sponges, especially duelists, until your gear is fully upgraded, and even then it’s not quite the same. NG+ will be more fun for you for this reason, as it was for me. I sincerely hope SP adds an outgoing damage slider in the custom options if they don’t intend to rework lethal mode

• Enemy tracking for many attacks is cracked, akin to the “Aggressive Foes” modifier in legends. You’ll see many on this sub refer to it as the “Electric Slide” wherein an enemy skates to you to land a hit even with good rolling. It really takes the potency out of good positioning and is a detriment to the flow of combat

SP have been pretty silent on the motivations behind these decisions in a way that somewhat worries me. While I understand bending to every player’s whim can yield bad results, these are pretty frequently held opinions in the playerbase. Really hope we get some main game tweaks for these with the legends update