Yeah, after trying her some more, I'm finding her candy bucket to be more useful. Leveling her up really helped. Each character takes at least two sessions with before I can get their playstyle down. The only exception to this so far is Hanabi. Just really don't like playing as her. Everything feels way too slow.
Also add Miyabi to the list of favorite characters. Her moveset is awesome. It feels like a better Ikaruga, which is absurd since Ikaruga is already great.
I'm enjoying myself way more that I though I would when I picked this up on a whim. Usually not into DW games, but the boss battles, customization, and variety of characters is making this a very fun and non stressful time waster. Only really complaint so far is the story mode seems to cut corners everywhere. The way the game handles any non playable character makes it blatantly obvious that they didn't want to bother making a character model for that character. At least give them a CG or something. I also wish each character had more than like 5 animations in the visual novel like cutscenes. Might give Shinobi Versus a try when it comes to PC.