Game finally clicked on the second time through.
My first time though, honestly, I didn't like it much at all. Felt sloppy, and blade mode is awesome on paper, and a bit in practice, but actually using aiming with the stick is just annoying--and to add insult, the detection of the red square seems to be off, as I'd slash through it and still not get the prompts at times. The framerate isn't a solid 60, with odd, occasional stutters during those incredibly annoying slow walk codec conversations and blade mode (PS3).
Then the second time came, after I read through the thread and learned that I could mash the face buttons during blade mode. I slowed on the ninja run during confrontations, got the hang of parrying, and mashed the face buttons during blade mode (actually getting on the mark much more often,) and came away impressed. I'm seeing that the boss battles is where this game is going to shine, as the fight against the AF AI Wolf, when I had gotten the hang of the mechanics, was fun as hell.
Which kinda brings me to the point of: This game is annoying as hell when facing waves of enemies. It's not bad~, but annoying, and definitely not as tight as it could be. When facing the boss, it was one on one for the majority of it, and you can see what they focused the system around. It was just FUN. But the waves of fodder enemies; they're stupid, and Raiden doesn't have much in the way of crowd control to deal with their dumb asses, aside from the combo of slide/sweep/blade mode, which just gets repetitive after a quick while.