There has been a bit of an issue with that in regards to enemies being too clustered together, gonna need to find a way to stop them from being so clustered or near each other so often. Also clarifying that when your severity is higher, there's less hit stun overall, and enemies will try to mash out on less tighter combos.
There is no directional dodge in the game as I do believe just turning left or right, then back dash or dashing is already very strong. Also a lot of, if not all, the enemy attacks are very much linear. Adding side dashes would just invalidate most of the close ranged attacks enemies have.
Also going to your quote here:
"I think I am able to describe in what I think is why the combat felt off. With how free-form it was, I was thinking that after a hit, I could cancel into some form of directional attack (basically if I push the left thumb stick to my left, the next punch from the character will go left), especially considering how much the enemies tend to gang up, as a way to do crowd control."
Attacks are actually soft auto locked from a certain distance on enemies, meaning that Yuuto will shift his forward position to the nearest enemy, but has to be very close in order for this to happen. I was trying to experiment to where the attack button isn't as dedicated as moving him forward, and having it similar to how strings work in Yakuza or No More Heroes by flicking the control stick a certain way, but that completely broke the way animations animated and collided. Will probably have to go in and change some normals that are more orbital in nature, since enemies do like to swarm around the player often.
"Side note, enemy animations and when I get hit from them feels confusing. Sometimes, I would just get stun-locked with how fast they attack after one another. And even when doing one on one, it seems like when an enemy runs after me, they can also attack while in running animation? Something to look into when possible."
Please describe which enemy this was. Might have to adjust behavior based on the issue of severity.