I've finished the game 2 times (on easy and normal) + played on hard till maybe level 5. Overall I enjoyed the game but there are some gameplay mechanics and features that just make it worse than it could be.
1) Friendly fire for co-op that you cannot disable. Really ruins it at moments, especially when you aim your ult/mighty at an enemy or boss and hit your buddy.
2) Bosses drop out of your combos and counter attack after 1-2 of your successful hits, which forces you to only use jump attacks or grab attack (1-2 hits) then throw. Also it renders your ult combo and mighty almost useless. I'd say ult combo (that last one in every character's move list) and mighty attack must hit entirely, even when you use it on bosses, because it's your powerful ult and costs meter.
3) In a lot of cases I've felt that fights take too long, enemies are damage sponges. Unless you play Haggar who deletes everything with his grabs (like playing Guy feels like a chore because of that).
So in the end I wouldn't say the game is hard, I really felt like easy and normal are kinda the same, and even hard is almost the same too, the main difference being the amount of lives and continues you have. Other than that the game just forces you to play certain way and some stuff makes no sense like useless ultra combos and ult for bosses, because they have the ability to break out of successful hits.
With some minor adjustments the game will be even better
