I'm playing on Normal and I already think this is on part with NG2 on at least Mentor. I can't imagine how hard Hard and MN are going to be. This game just doesn't give a fuck about encounter design or anything.

>enemies attack from off screen literally all the time with no distinct audio cues
>every single enemy has super ebin delayed attack swing animations they'll do from off screen so if you're in an arena with multiple strong enemies good lucking guessing the timing
>obscenely high damage from every enemy
>ranged spitter zombies have no audio or visual cues, they aren't even that visually different from standard zombies
>you will take damage from a ranged zombie's acid puddle before you even gain control of Yakumo/Ryu again if you're doing an Obliteration technique
>poison jar enemies punish you for successfully killing them by leaving a gigantic poison area for 15 seconds after they die
>game is clearly incredibly counter/parry heavy but is fast paced, has intentional delayed swing attacks from every enemy, and dismal audio cues

And to top all of this off you're actively penalized for using items which has never been in the case for the 3D Ninja Gaiden games. Yeah I'm glad on some level they made the game hard, but this feels incredibly overwhelming even for someone who is pretty season with action games.