I like the concept! I'm a big fan of souls-like games that require good timing/prediction, and this game had a bit of that feel.
I think the animation timing of attacks could be tweaked to feel a bit better. It seems that the enemy attack windup is quite fast, so that doesn't give the player much opportunity to parry based on reaction time, so therefore the player needs to parry based on predicting when the enemy is going to attack.
The enemies have a somewhat predictable behaviour (run at the player until they are in range and then attack), but sometimes it seems they take longer to transition to an attacking state. This variability in delay before attacking makes it hard to predict when enemies are going to attack, and can make it frustrating to play. If the variation is predictable, then the player can learn and improve to know the different possible timings, but the variability in delay seemed to be quite random and hard to predict, so it didn't feel like there was much room for me to improve.
I think that is the core aspect of the combat that you could improve, and I really think it would make a significant impact on how fun this game is.
Other than that, there were a couple other pieces of feedback I had:
- Leveling system/stats seemed unnecessary - I think it's overly complex for an arcade high-score type game, and it also wasn't clear to me how levelling up affected the player, or what stats do.
- Trying to attack while I was in hit stun still used up stamina - since I had to work hard for my stamina, it was frustrating when it got used up with no effect
- The enemies seemed to transition back to an idle state before dying - this looked a bit weird, and made it hard to distinguish what enemies I had already hit/killed, and which I hadn't
- There was no game juice when the player died - some visual effects/sound effects would have made it feel more impactful
I think this game has a lot of potential, and that's why I left so much feedback! Keep it up, I think if you keep refining the combat, it could be very fun!