Oh no you didn't go overboard at all, thank you a ton for this feedback! In hindsight the spearmen were unfair in their design. I did try to put the stationary one at the beginning to help the player learn a bit about their attack and how to tell which way they're facing, but it's easy to blow through them so quickly you don't really notice anything about them. I could've also gone with better color choices to make the spear more noticeable in addition to fixing the animation. The ninjas too I'd agree were a mix of lackluster game and level design. I couldn't playtest much to get the placement right but I do agree the first two pop up too suddenly to be fair. I did consider putting a block in front of them so the player could learn about them in relative safety but I didn't think I had time to add in collision for the shuriken. But I'm glad to hear the big brutes worked well!
I did consider at one point adding in better telegraphs for all the enemies like the exclamation points from Dead Cells, and possibly even parry and dodging mechanics (all of which might've added even more to the power fantasy), but I just didn't have the experience or time to do those systems justice. Despite that I do feel much better prepared to do a much better job the next time around. And again, thank you so much for the feedback and for playing my game!