The overall flow of a match, the general lack of deep strategy, and the skewed risk/reward ratio.
- The offensive player is rarely in control.
- Spacing doesn't mean much because even if you make an opponent whiff, they have a 0-frame counter to take care of any whiff punishment you attempt.
- The new sidestep is nice, but if you only get canned attacks from it, that drastically limits the potential.
- Punishment still seems to be throws (primarily), since they are the fastest attacks and unbreakable for the most part. Unless you have a throw that launch (in previous games, most characters don't), you get minimal damage, which means it's not that bad to use unsafe attacks (compared to other fighters).
- When you work hard to open up the opponent, it still seems as though they can counter as soon as you put them in stun. However, there are reports of oddities in this, so we'll have to see how far those oddities goes.
- General lack of movement. Look at pretty much every other 3D fighter and there's a good reason for constant movement of some sort. DOA has no need for this, other than to position yourself better within the stage. There's no advanced movement and due to a lack of spacing, no real need for it.
- Decently fast lows that stun on normal hit. Other 3D fighters have them here and there, but overall most lows that lead to damage are either slow or need to be CH to get the damage. Soul Calibur takes this one step farther by making almost all fast lows negative on hit.
I will say again that this is just the demo, and I still believe there's plenty of time to make this game great (if it isn't already). I'm merely pointing out the flaws that still exist as of the demo, which is at least 3-4 months old (in terms of code).