Bumping because I'm playing on Mentor now.
This is awful. 90% of the enemies are the gun ninjas or the rocket launcher guys, so you're basically required to constantly block pre-emptively lest one of the 5 enemies onscreen start shooting and stunlock you. The game has you fight Rasetsu with shuriken lackeys, and then immediately recycles the encounter in the next level, but changes Rasetsu AI so he rarely uses attacks that allow you to counter. The Van Gelf encounters take the number of enemies far past the point that it's reasonable and wear you down through sheer attrition rather than any sort of actual I don't know, encounter design. The real problem which is making me want to just stop right now is the subway boss. Unbelievably terrible. It has attacks that are literally undodgeable, forcing you to spam UT or ninpo. Unless of course, it decides to use two attacks at once, in which case you automatically lose/ are forced to use healing items. Had to use a Lives of the Thousand Gods and grains to beat that disaster of a boss.
So, very poor impressions right now.