Fighting games systems are ambitious and I'm excited to see how this turns out! I think directional special move inputs is a good idea, makes the special moves nice and straightforward. Looking at your known bugs & the demo's writeup you know what needs to be implemented, so I'm looking forward to when all those features get added. I was hoping I could plug in my cheatbox and use that instead of keyboard but oh well, maybe in a future build ;)
I've included a video of my playthrough, I hope it helps. I didn't read through the known bugs before recording, so just ignore me please.