Nice game... have to agree with a lot of the comments below
Not so great:
1) having to wait for that bar to go down before your power activates sucks
2) performing a successful 4 hit, should not punish you with having to wait... I think you should be instead given a full bar so that you don't loose any flow, you should only be punished if you get hit or miss or hit a wall.
3) that first boss is HARD .... second boss is a piece of cake.
4) you might want to lock the player from continuing until they kill the baddies, otherwise you can skip most of level 1 with out even fighting ... which given how hard that 1st boss was and no save point, was actually nice.
5) There is a lack of story
Great stuff:
1) the mechanic is fun, cool stuff, just wish it was less broken.
2) For some reason I really like Haley's design ... overall the art was great =] I even made you some fan art (with some AI help)
Good submission overall ! Keep on going !