First of all, let me preface this post by saying thanks for inviting me for this and stating that overall I had a great time with the Alpha and it convinced me to be there day 1 for the final release.
Though while I had a great time overall it wasn't without its share of issues (as is usual with an Alpha):

Network
First up, I want to mention the connection problems that were a little too plentiful during my time with the Alpha. I'd often get kicked during Host Migration procedures, making me end up in a game full of bots, which kinda sucks the fun out of the experience, since I want to play with real people. This happened especially often in Dominion mode,making me not bother with that mode all too much even though I enjoyed it.
There's also the problem of getting kicked due to inactivity, which came up sometimes especially in Brawls when I or my partner was dead and the battle of the remaining players went on for a while. Maybe just not kick players who are already dead?
Another thing I noticed was the friendslist, which would sometimes show that all my friends are offline even though that was not the case. This unfortunately prevented me from playing with my brother one evening.
And lastly, matchmaking would sometimes take really long, but that just may be because this was a closed Alpha and thus had a fairly low playerbase. That and the long loading times for matches made for a lot of time sitting in the lobby rather than playing.
These are all the major network problems that my brother (Haraldderhammer) and I experienced. There's still some time till the final release so I hope these get sorted out.

Gear
I m generally fine with a gear system that lets you customize your characters' stats a little, what I'm iffy on is the ability to upgrade that gear. This gives a clear numerical advantage to players who have played the game longer and I feel a competitive game like this should have players win with their superior strategies/experience alone rather than some better gear. The unlocks you get for game progression should just be cosmetical.

Combat
Overall I thought the combat looked and felt great. Every character feels distinct, the game encourages tactical play rather than button mashing making every encounter feel intense and there is a lot of weight to the animations making them feel really good and satisfying.
My one problem here comes from a balance perspective. It is about the Orochi in particular. While this character is certainly not unbeatable, I felt it was a notch above all the others in terms of risk vs. reward. Most other characters have a very hard time dealing with the sheer mobility of the Orochi, be it just the general speed of their attacks or the abundance of dash moves this character has. The Orochi also gets a lot of reward from landing their (not that hard to land) moves, especially the backdash swordstrike, which guarantees them two top lights after the already great damage of the swordstrike itself. And after that the Orochi can still put on the pressure thanks to the great attack speed. The Orochi is also the one class that gets a guaranteed heavy after a guardbreak, furthering the great damage output. All that goes on top of the amazing deflect ability which allows the Orochi to turn the tables rather easily.
All of these things combined in one character is a bit too much in my opinion. I think quite a few people noticed that as the Orochi was the most used character by far, at least from what I saw, and I played this Alpha for quite a bit (~15h)


That is pretty much all I have to say, apart from these issues I'm very impressed with the game. Hope the issues can get ironed out as I'm eagerly anticipating the final release in February.