I got a chance to play this on Sunday, and it was pretty damn fun. If I had to compare it to other fighters, I'd say the gameplay is most similar to Street Fighter Alpha, Vampire Savior, or KOF 99-2001, though the pacing is a bit slower than those games (and nothing felt as stupid as SFA3 Akuma or VSav Wolfman). It's something that I'd like to play more, if I could get the game for a reasonable price (or if I wasn't about to spend another month traveling for work *laughs* ).
Some things felt a little silly (i.e. Touka has a super that acts as both a command grab and a counter move, Manaka's books are active for days after she recovers, Karalau does damage even with on-the-fly day 0 combos, Morgan has a projectile super with invincible startup that's also safe on block at pointblank range), but nothing seemed like it'd be too bad if I'd actually known stuff about the game before playing it. Of course, this is day 0 play, so I wasn't expecting to find anything ridiculously broken *laughs* . But seriously, all of the silly things seemed manageable once I knew to expect them, despite playing against people who at least had some experience with the game, and nothing seemed outright dumb, so that's...something.
Not knowing anything about the source anime/visual novels made no difference...hell, if anything, it was more fun, because I got to make up backstories. Many laughs were had when I decided Karalau was an alcoholic nymphomaniac furry who secretly idolizes Terry Bogard and got partnered with tsundere anti-nature terrorist Yu, who in turn was jealous of the attention Karalau was giving to demure pro-nature shrine maiden samurai Touka.
