There is some coyote time but it's pretty short, only a tenth of a second, so I can extend it to a quarter. For drop shadow, I think it may just make more sense to direct the sun directly downward to achieve that (like in mario odyssey), but I'll have to see if I like the appearance of the environment like this, in which case I'll opt for a different solution. I can make the damage effect more obvious in the short term but will probably play around with this should I return to this more fully. And lastly, I can have the boxer enemies ease up a bit, but the game is pushing the player to learn the essential skill of parrying (which has a pretty forgiving window as it is, especially compared to smash), as otherwise I feel this would make the combat pretty generic and simplistic.
For making a parry obvious, it's really anytime a character chooses to guard, similar to Sekiro, where the timing of the guard is what makes it a parry. Making this too cartoony/obvious I feel would remove the feeling of an actual "duel" or fight on equal terms. The parry effect by itself is already a different sound, color, and size (but again, I'll make spark effect more contrasted from the others)
As for automatically rotating the player, this might make sense for mouse and keyboard and for a more simplistic combat system, but this would end up limiting the player's ability to direction their attacks precisely to hit the enemy from behind. Attack vectors come from the motion of the weapon, not the player, so you can be facing forward and away from the enemy and still hit the enemy in the back depending on the motion of the spoon, which is a technique useful against the more intelligent enemies since they cant block these kinds of attacks.
