Fun demo, just slightly repetitive

[Cyber Akuma]

I liked this demo overall, I love stop-motion inspired media (Though to be honest, it didn't feel like the gameplay was stop motion-like so much as jerky, the jumping especially looked awkward) and there is some very high production values here in the FMVs. The gameplay though I admit felt a little repetitive, mostly fighting the same enemy repeatedly in the same area. The menus also felt a little restrictive to move around in. E.G. only the d-pad assigns items, only the left stick moves around my inventory, the whole offering/upgrade menu I was struggling to navigate around, etc. I was confused what moves I was doing as well, I was mostly pressing my right stick in random directions. I love how you can basically custom-design your combos, but as stylish as it is seeing the silhouette of your character doing the moves, it's hard to tell which move is what at a glance that way.

Overall it was fun but half the time I didn't really know what I was doing half the time (I didn't even realize you can run until I beat the demo and saw my character running in the trailer), the way menus only let specific buttons/inputs move you around in specific areas and having all those moves through at me at once took a bit to even understand, and it didn't help that it feels like the game tries to teach you every mechanic at once instead of letting you learn one before moving onto the other.

Oh, one last thing, please give us an easy way to skip dialog, at least if we have seen it before. I died near the end when I was supposed to defeat the wave of enemies breaking into the passage and I had to go through all that dialog about my wife making the strength potion and the FMV of her giving it to me again. I know I can skip the FMV (though the skip is rather delayed) but there was no way to skip through that dialog before the FMV. This can get very annoying if there is a big speech or scene before a boss fight that players are likely to die to a lot.