I genuinely really like the concept of this game, turned based fighters are an extremely cool idea; but I feel it's fundamentally flawed as it's currently implemented.
As it stands, the game is less of a turn based fighter, and more of a hardware check. The major challenge isn't puzzling out the enemy, it's hoping your keyboard doesn't drop your input. Which is how I took most of my damage (The rest of it is failing to apply fundamentals and misreading what the book tells me to input). The inherent rock paper scissors nature of the game also doesn't work to the game's advantage. You have a set of 7 moves, but there's zero reason to use anything but a select set of whatever the game decides is the "Correct" choice in that set of enemies based on the mission you chose. You don't need to concern yourself with spacing, frame advantage or move priority; just whether or not you've matched the appropriate input. Even the color of the attack doesn't matter because the only punishment is not dealing damage, as you still win the exchange; you just don't deal damage and it only serves to extend the engagement. I did use the book, but in my opinion all that does is serve to remove the trial and error involved with figuring out opponents; and the final result is still repeating the same small grouping of inputs over and over again.
The timer is also another thing that doesn't add much and encourages repetitive play, a good example is the ninja fight in the third difficulty. He throws a gold move at you every so often, which the book tells you to throw a full circle to counter. Full circles are a pain in the ass on a stick, never mind a keyboard, but then I discovered you can also counter that move with a half-circle back; so I just did that the whole fight. Switching between neutral green and a 632146 motion, as not only is it faster to input it's also way harder to drop. Never once did I feel the need to use a different move like a DP or the full circle red super, because the game doesn't create the scenarios where those inputs would be useful and the punishment for taking the risk is too severe.
The best thing I think this game could do is take more influence from Yomi Hustle, make the game more of a chess match style puzzler instead of a reflex based input game. Because I don't believe the way the game currently is will last for any extended period of game time.