you get all your favorite CAG mechanics tossed into a single melting pot and what amounts to a discount bloody palace to test them in. both regular and slash combos, a launcher, multiple aerial combos, killer bee, two different Ultimate Techniques, a dodge roll, a block, a parry, a counter, meter management, a remote insta-kill attack, also probably other shit I'm forgetting (pseudo-stinger?, uh... I think there's a leg sweep?). once you purchase the full toolkit the game becomes a Combo Mad for Dummies playset that lets you fuck around with cool-looking shit for minimal effort.
I originally started on hard and jettisoned my playthrough thanks to the beefy enemies and endless kiting required to deal damage. honestly sort of unplayable if you don't just do quick runs on easy and normal to stock up on orbs beforehand thanks to an overreliance on attack boost upgrades from the shop for nearly everything in the game. a fully upgraded kit will push you far enough to make hard a relatively comfortable experience assuming that you've got a good handle on the enemy attack timings. very hard is where it falls apart... using a very traditional CAG toolkit with a musou enemy count makes any move with an AoE instantly privileged, and then the game really turns into endless kiting. when twenty separate projectile users each stagger their attacks to block out any approach, there's not much you can do but use your second ultimate technique and wind slash everyone from afar.
biggest mechanical issue is the meter management. I've mentioned the ninja gaiden-esque UTs a couple times, but in those games they either required a long charge that left you wide open or orbs left behind by other enemies. here you have a meter that refills on basic attacks and drains via slashes or UTs. however, there's also that remote damage mechanic where any enemy that's been bloodied (aka beat up enough) will be dealt an amount of damage that scales with another meter based on your current combo (aka how long you've lasted without being hit). at the latter meter's top level, bloodied enemies will be instantly killed and release orbs/health/primary meter, and even at its lowest level it'll offer a substantial boost to your primary meter regardless. with the required upgrades, you get a whopping eight+ bars of primary meter to work with, meaning that it almost never runs out. you can more or less just spam UTs over and over again and then press the insta-kill button to refill everything for free. just not really well-designed in terms of how the different mechanics interact; there should have been a greater cost for using your most powerful attacks.
other big issue is the big enemies, who don't stagger at all until bloodied. a lot of the later waves turn into spamming guard-canceled Iai strikes in between enemy movement until they're bloodied and then instantly killing them. sorta undermines the whole cuhrayzee approach the game takes overall since the eye candy evaporates the further in you get. still a pretty cool sandbox for like two hours tho. might've come back to it but my ps+ extra expired :(
I originally started on hard and jettisoned my playthrough thanks to the beefy enemies and endless kiting required to deal damage. honestly sort of unplayable if you don't just do quick runs on easy and normal to stock up on orbs beforehand thanks to an overreliance on attack boost upgrades from the shop for nearly everything in the game. a fully upgraded kit will push you far enough to make hard a relatively comfortable experience assuming that you've got a good handle on the enemy attack timings. very hard is where it falls apart... using a very traditional CAG toolkit with a musou enemy count makes any move with an AoE instantly privileged, and then the game really turns into endless kiting. when twenty separate projectile users each stagger their attacks to block out any approach, there's not much you can do but use your second ultimate technique and wind slash everyone from afar.
biggest mechanical issue is the meter management. I've mentioned the ninja gaiden-esque UTs a couple times, but in those games they either required a long charge that left you wide open or orbs left behind by other enemies. here you have a meter that refills on basic attacks and drains via slashes or UTs. however, there's also that remote damage mechanic where any enemy that's been bloodied (aka beat up enough) will be dealt an amount of damage that scales with another meter based on your current combo (aka how long you've lasted without being hit). at the latter meter's top level, bloodied enemies will be instantly killed and release orbs/health/primary meter, and even at its lowest level it'll offer a substantial boost to your primary meter regardless. with the required upgrades, you get a whopping eight+ bars of primary meter to work with, meaning that it almost never runs out. you can more or less just spam UTs over and over again and then press the insta-kill button to refill everything for free. just not really well-designed in terms of how the different mechanics interact; there should have been a greater cost for using your most powerful attacks.
other big issue is the big enemies, who don't stagger at all until bloodied. a lot of the later waves turn into spamming guard-canceled Iai strikes in between enemy movement until they're bloodied and then instantly killing them. sorta undermines the whole cuhrayzee approach the game takes overall since the eye candy evaporates the further in you get. still a pretty cool sandbox for like two hours tho. might've come back to it but my ps+ extra expired :(