Thanks! I guess it would be common courtesy for me to actually give you a proper review now!
The game looks stunning, with the graphics really delivering on that consistency in colour palette, pixel size, and theme. Really feels proper to a professional level. Unfortunately (for me), I was alone in my flat when I tested this game, meaning that I didn't get the full experience of fighting another player one-to-one, but I'll do my best to summarize my thoughts here regardless.
The simple controls reflect that rock-paper-scissor vibe that most fighting games have, with the attack-deflect synergy. I would have liked to seen that being fully implemented, switching the deflect for maybe a counter and making it so the counter could be overcome by something like a grapple. Now, maybe I'm wrong here and the system you have in place works a lot better than what I'm proposing, and I'm just unable to properly test it. If that is the case, disregard this last paragraph!
In general, I have a hard time to put into words what makes this game feel professionally made, but I think I could summarize it all by saying "Juice". This game feels like it has been juiced to bits, to get everything feel more impactful, such as the small shake the samurais go through when they deliver a killing blow, the impactful sound that goes along with that, and more.
There were some issues I found though. When an enemy goes down, you could keep on spamming the attack key on their corpse and the game would not continue. It would be stuck in some cruel limbo. Also, if I timed it correctly, I could skip an entire round, because I killed the enemy again between frames. It's not the biggest bug in the world, but it is a bug nonetheless. The lack of walking animation did bother me a bit, but it is not something that's really that important.