Beat the demo now. I am having a better time now that I understand the mechanics more.
You can end bosses relatively fast if you learn their moveset. Because you'll remember what combos will have blue aura attacks for parry and eventually the timing to do it. You can also do a finisher during the super attack L2+R2 move to extend the punishment and delete health bars pretty fast. And the L2+face button Arena specials help out too.
Also, charging the attack button gives different attacks. Both on the ground and in the air. the straight sword launch, hold attack in the air is pretty cool. The ground one from the straight sword seems to deplete the shield meter nicely.
The best feature though, it seems you can fucking cancel everything. I was in the middle of some special move, saw the boss go blue and I parried its attack with O. You can also fire back projectiles with O, it insta kills those snake guys.
The level design is nothing special, but it isn't bloated. The weird thing is the many times the game takes over control as if this game was designed 20 years ago. Then all of a sudden you're thrown into a short hoverboard section that doesn't really work well and a linear running section. Its a bit odd.
Other than that you're pretty much thrown into trash mob group battles and then a boss battle. Talk to the chick to resplenish heals, even though you can't use any of the features in her menu. Combat is really fun. The problem is the price tag, esp. in Europe. 70 is a bit steep.
