I really want to like this submission more than I do, but I think this is an example of seeing a mechanic that works, and trying to replicate it without understanding why it works at the minute level
This clearly takes inspiration from Sekiro, and I think that's great. I love Sekiro. But the combat system in Sekiro works because it's built as a back and forth. I think this clearly shows in the ImmerRed fight. She doesn't function like the mechanics of the game would intend her to - she does what she wants, when she wants, with no hit feedback, and its not a duel, like Sekiro's boss fights. She has strings that feel nearly un-counterable, and no startup on some combos, so the combat boils down to you standing still and waiting for a string to parry, then intermittently pressing r1 so she doesn't catch you in the middle of a combo and melt your health, then rinse and repeat until she's dead. And she can still deal damage to you even when you parry since her moves have so many active frames. But you can't stick to that anyways because she'll just randomly start backing off or running around you, maybe the AI could be adjusted so she stands her ground a little more often and attacks the player. The active frames on the attacks and her passivity are probably my two biggest gripes.
I think managing the Otomo in the back is an interesting concept, but can quickly fall apart. The laser isn't bad mostly since you can parry it, but the shockwave can be atrocious since you can't always see it coming, and the effect will desync. And it can proc after respawning, hitting you while restarting the fight and putting you at an immediate disadvantage.
Apologies if I sound a little harsh, but since the combat supposed to be the main draw of this submission, and it really only works well on the regular enemies, and not the boss fight, I wanted to go in depth on where it felt like it could be improved to work better in that regard.
The levels themselves were alright - I wasn't expecting such a big map, but I felt there were too many enemies that it slows the pace down to crawl if you try to fight them one by one. I stealth killed some of them, but I ended up running past most of them in the second area, but they track you forever and their projectiles pass through structures, so running through that second part of the level, I was quite literally playing a bullet hell. Part of that is my fault, for not fighting them and killing them, but putting nearly 10 enemies on a single section rooftop is a bit excessive, when combat is supposed to focus around 1 or 2 enemies at most.
Atmosphere and ambience wise, I think its perfect. I really like the cutscenes, they're a nice touch of flair to a game jam submission and they're very well animated. having Cece's entire stream room modeled caught me by surprise, and the settings for the levels all make sense and fit with her too.
Couple bugs that I think I was running into: I think you can animation cancel with blocking? I would get knocked down and block and it would immediately get me back up as a result. Honestly a pretty useful tech, but I doubt it's intended. And swapping the target you were locked onto with the D-Pad was not working, maybe that was just for me, but I wasn't able to juggle between two enemies standing next to each out, I had to manually unlock and lock back on again to get it to adjust.
I think this has some solid foundation, and I love to see a souls inspired game, and it makes sense that you would pick Cece and one of the games she's well known for playing, but I definitely think it would have benefitted more to take the time to research the combat system that you were trying to emulate, and expanding on it specifically first, then making the boss fight tailored to it, then moving to the sections of the gameplay with just Otomos. Overall though, good work from the team, would be awesome to see some post jam support on this one!