Hi,
I played the game a bit (finished the first 4 fights you can teleport to using the stele).
First of all, thanks for the gamepad support, always appreciated (even if it seems to not work perfectly well in the menus especially to remap the controls, but I didn't encounter any issues during gameplay).
I kinda like that there is abilities you can use in combat. When you're first learning the game, they kinda act as a crutch you can rely on to still have fun and manage to do things.
At the end of the day though, the combat system still seems to be centred around parries and counters, which I think is one of the aspect that lacks a bit of polishing.
I think I managed to do some parries and counter attacks? But to be honest, I couldn't tell. I think there isn't enough visual or audio feedback for when you do those... Or at least, they aren't different enough from regular blocks/attacks.
Like, having some kind of freeze frame, or clear visual cue to tell you "right there, you did a cool move" would be nice.
For example, I knew I attacked into an enemy attack correctly not really because of the audio/visual cue, but because of my "stun" meter reseting, which doesn't really feel as nice as a cool "SWOMP" with a freeze frame x).
Like, weird comparison, but this old Naruto fighting game comes to mind. At 15 seconds, the kind of negative circle appearing when two attacks counter each other was the coolest thing when I was a kid.
Not saying that it needs to be that, but that's the kind of impact that I think could add to your game to make it more obvious when you're doing things correctly, and in the end help you learn.
I will not talk about the jiggle physics and the headpats, but live your dream boss 👍.