I really want to like this game more than I do. The overall premise is fun and I love the personality they infuse it with.

However, the gameplay is... like holding the sharp end of the sword: usable and exciting but once you squeeze too hard it's just pain.

You can get most of the way into the game with it being light and fun but then they introduce a terrible mechanic: failing to correctly respond to attacks regenerates stance.

The first time this "perfecting" mechanic shows up it's not so bad and the game eases you into handling multiple enemies at once with it via environmental interactions. Everything is looking good until you get close to the end of the game. Fights start to either have no environmental help or throw *tons* of these enemies at you at once. Instead of the combat continuing to fun and exciting (channeling a swinging from the chandelier mentality) it devolves into drudgery as combat can take forever, any mistakes are severely punished, and all of that creativity in combat goes out the window.

You might be thinking "oh, you're just bad at this kind of 'parrying' game" and I am but here's the scenario I found all too often: you end up close to a wall (areas are sometimes kinda small), the camera decides to go into said wall making it difficult to understand what's going on, you dodge to get some space from the wall to regain your vision, that dodge wasn't the correct response to one of the combatants and now all of that progress you've made towards the next hit on that enemy is gone. At some point it just loses the fun.

I really want to like this game more than I do. The overall premise is fun and I love the personality they infuse it with. However, the gameplay is... like holding the sharp end of the sword: usable and exciting but once you squeeze too hard it's just pain. You can get most of the way into the game with it being light and fun but then they introduce a terrible mechanic: failing to correctly respond to attacks regenerates stance. The first time this "perfecting" mechanic shows up it's not so bad and the game eases you into handling multiple enemies at once with it via environmental interactions. Everything is looking good until you get close to the end of the game. Fights start to either have no environmental help or throw *tons* of these enemies at you at once. Instead of the combat continuing to fun and exciting (channeling a swinging from the chandelier mentality) it devolves into drudgery as combat can take forever, any mistakes are severely punished, and all of that creativity in combat goes out the window. You might be thinking "oh, you're just bad at this kind of 'parrying' game" and I am but here's the scenario I found all too often: you end up close to a wall (areas are sometimes kinda small), the camera decides to go into said wall making it difficult to understand what's going on, you dodge to get some space from the wall to regain your vision, that dodge wasn't the correct response to one of the combatants and now all of that progress you've made towards the next hit on that enemy is gone. At some point it just loses the fun.