Hey there! This game looks incredible. I almost didn't believe what I was seeing at first! All the BA art is your own work and it is great. The attention to detail is just spectacular. It felt like an SNES title!
I think the sound design is also pretty good, and your integration of Hoshino's lore is really fun.
That being said, I should make some criticisms on the gameplay. It's really hard to gauge how far your punches go in general, as you have such a tiny range, but it's nearly impossible to gauge it when facing up or down and they're obscured. Having tiles on the ground might help give a sense of depth for this.
Then there's how the drones fire. It's a little weird to me that all the obstacles are kinda not really there. Sometimes they block their view, sometimes they don't. But the bullets don't stop for anything. Even if you hide behind a wall, meaning if you're spotted from far away it's game over.
The drones also have this tendency to fire during takedowns (which should probably be shorter anyway) and a little after they die, which can screw you over. This gets particularly annoying when I get killed and have to redo everything, including getting the drops. You could make a big improvement by replenishing health with these pick-ups, I'd say.
As it stands, I've been playing this game for 2 days and I couldn't beat that crowded room because of the bullet issues.
It might seem like a lot of criticisms, but that's just because this is such a cool game idea and I want to see this go as far as possible. Reading your devlogs makes me hopeful I'll see a version with guns someday.
Stay tuned for results on Sunday! This was incredible!