Cookie Cutter Review (max :))
A game that feels like it should have been an animated short rather than a game.
For how nice it looks, the game is severely lacking, combat has poor hit feedback, hitboxes are iffy, and some things are over-animated without any means of animation cancelling.
What does this mean for the game? You get flash game tier "too light feeling for how well animated it is" in a game where any flow is often completely stifled by needing to watch an (admittedly very well done) animation before your next move will work. The most obvious of these is the parry, when you land on a platform you can't immediately parry, you have to wait for the landing animation to play out. Is this intended? Shrug. Is this fun? Naw lol.
I noticed at the start that even though your character is all messed up and bleeding (fun to waggle the stick left and right here as there's no turning animation), the blood coming from your character doesn't even leave a smear on the floor. This wouldn't be a problem normally, but it turns out the rest of the game is like that too - bland environments that feel like both you and the enemies aren't there due to lack of decals, or any hint of interactivity that could possibly let you suspend your disbelief for 2 seconds.
I think what this all boils down to is a lack of polish, enemies will sometimes teleport both you and themselves into random locations during the (well animated) finishers, your character will often run in front of objects that should clearly be in the background, it just... looks crappy.
Again, despite the clear effort that's gone into the animations, where's that sort of love for the other artistic aspects? Ignoring the glaring flaws with the gameplay, it's just not very fun to look at, or attempt to interact with.