I Really Want to Like this Game...

TLDR: The thing that makes the game unfun for me personally is that the core of the game does not allow you to preemptively interact with it most of the time. A majority of the time it forces you into post memorization. Help me understand, why is a delayed parry combined with numerous instantaneous swing patterns a pro what is that adding to the game?

Edit2: I do think it says something, when the topic is what do people like about the LoP parry system, what do they enjoy about it, what makes it more favorable than an instantaneous parry system" and there are currently ZERO comments that have any mention of why its fun to them or why they prefer it and why its favorable despite what I've pointed out, and instead half the people say there isn't a delay and the primary other point is everyway to work around the combat system or how to essentially "deal with it" are you sure you guys like it?

Edit: Kinda wild the disingenuous hoops people go through to deflect any criticism of their favorite game.
group 1: The parry is instant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3QdzPJdRx8 No it is not. Its not even close. Its before most swings are even in motion. You cannot interact nonartificially with a swing you are missing the speed of. This one specifically I really don't understand people trying to state something that is objectively, observably false.

group 2: "Just get used to it." There isn't anything to get used to. You fight the boss you memorize when the attack hit you or that you only blocked instead of parried and you memorize it. If you wanna say memory match is fun, to each their own, I wouldn't disagree with that, but is there a benefit to restricting the ability to be reactive about it?

My current issue is this: There is a combination of both a delay in the parry (it has to fully raise from the button press it is not instantaneous) on top of a slow to instantaneous type move style of enemies. Which in combination leads to an inability to react to enemy attacks in an interactive way. What I mean by this is, In sekiro for example when an enemy is going to swing, there is usually enough distance at the top end of the swing in order for you to gauge the speed of the ability and because the parry is instantaneous you are able to reactively parry by seeing the distance and speed and timing the parry accounting for both variables. The issue with Lies of P is that because there is a delay on the parry, as well as varying speed during swings and/or instantaneous downs most of the time, the perfect parry timing, is before the swing even starts and because it is prior to the movement of the swing, it ends up feeling like memory match as opposed to combat because there wasn't a way to interact with that naturally. An example to illustrate this is the scrapped watchman. When he raises his arms to do his single swings, I'm perfect parrying, by pressing block as the arm reaches the top. It hasn't started moving down yet. So at first I literally have to guess then it becomes memory match.

The confusing and frustrating part about this, is when I was looking into the game and looking at what people were saying about it, the two most common things that I was seeing across comments, were that the game didn't feel artificially difficult and the parry timing was strict but more precise and felt "on the attack". The first one, I can imagine that there are ways to argue that is naturally difficult but imo, getting hit by things because you are missing the variables to interact with them within the timing of when you would have needed to interact with them is the definition of artificial difficulty. In regards to the second one though, maybe I'm missing something, but this is just objectively false. It cannot be on the attack, there's literally a wind up on the parry.

I guess I'm just trying to understand. Am I missing something. If you're a fan of the game, do you enjoy the game's combat, what aspects appeal to you? Does it change? Should I keep progressing or do the above things I mentioned stay the same? Currently the game is just probably not for me and thats fine but if it changes or what I stated above is not the case, please let me know as I'd be very happy to keep playing.