Gave it a playthrough. Took me three tries to beat the boss.
Enemies would be a lot more threatening if they could turn around to follow you, or broke out of stunlock somehow. Probably not news.
The weapons' special attacks are good, but I don't really feel a difference between the regular lights and heavies. Like the speed and windup times feel exactly the same.
For the boss, I feel like he could do with some more telegraphing of his attacks. Does he respond at all to being hit?
Player character has more momentum than I'd like for a game with such fast and short-range attacks. (also it would make it a little easier to "nothing personnel" enemies with the backstep.
Parry feels pretty weak. Like it's hard to pull off comapred to your other defensive options and only resets to neutral without giving you a frame advantage?
Also like others have said, you can't have a DMC-style beat-em-up without juggling. Accidentally putting juggling in Onimusha is what gave birth to the genre in the first place.
I don't really have anything nice to say about the game in its current state, but I think I can see where you're going and I'm looking forward to seeing it realized.