Hatchets are really nice and smooth to use. Have some sick potential. I was hoping we got another weapon instead of the odachi. Not to say that I don't like the odachi, but having two sword type weapons in the alpha felt redundant.
The new yokai skills and yokai shifts are a nice addition. Yokai shifts are broken as you can constantly do charged heavy attacks to destroy enemies and bosses. With the right onmyo build that extracts amrita, you can be in yokai mode for a long time. Due to the limitations of the beta i couldn't explore this aspect more, but come full game I'm sure this can be abused. They need to make sure it's not broken at launch haha.
P.S - my first post on GAF, so hi everyone