Feels great to play so far. All of the animation cancels are perfect, and the weapon types are all distinct and feel snappy to use. I decided to blow all of my money on the Lance in the store since I loved spears in the Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin, and so far it's not disappointed.
So far I love the weapon techniques. It's so much better to have the fighting game combos on weapon moves than spells like in SOTN, because your failure to perform precise input commands no longer locks you out of the magic system as a whole, but just some cool additions to your weapon moveset. They also cost a fair bit of mana, so it's a tradeoff with spell usage. I accidentally discovered the Chun Li kick move on the Kung Fu Boots (though a book in the tutorial level gives it to you for free) and used it to boost myself to a secret area. Only elite players can get the pirate hat before the first boss
Level design is cool already with secrets, optional exploration, and looping shortcuts (it's like Dark Souls hurr durr!). Enemies are fun to fight and encounters do a good job testing movement and combat mechanics. It's a hypnotic gameplay loop that's managed to remain fresh for decades, and it's no slouch here. The Zengetsu boss was also some reaaaaaal good shit.
The game's difficult enough on Normal for me, though I never had a problem with the default difficulty in Iga's prior games for the first playthrough (except maybe SotN and HoD, which were definitely a bit too easy). I like having a bit more room to screw around and explore the game's sytems, and then challenge myself to use them properly on replay.
Some of the animations are definitely jank, but the gameplay's excellent where it counts. Plus I don't think the overall visuals are bad at all otherwise.
So far it's exactly what I wanted. Probably my most worthy
