Ah, I tried it out just now and saw how it works (watched a clip of Sekiro as well). It sounds like using the parry is how you would win this most quickly; for me as a jam player, it was hard to hit that window consistently enough (one miss results in a lot of damage) that I didn't feel better off leaning more on the dodge-to-strike. I'm impressed that there's this additional layer of complexity to the combat, though! Again, great work on this game!