The game does so much to make throws and the "neutral game" in general as miserable as possible. The way it tracks the player's proximity to enemies is busted - they don't attack when you're in range they attack when your sprites are slightly near each other meaning they will constantly hit air because you're in their general vicinity and do preemptive attacks when you try to approach them.
On its own this makes grabs & a lot of your basic attacks very inconsistent forcing spam of high priority attacks like dive kicks like you mention. But then you combine that with armor on enemy attacks and it changes it from a more traditional proactive beat em up into a game of bait & use punish window - the gameplay style I want to get away from when I play 2D beat em ups because it's EVERYWHERE nowadays. Also grabs not having iframes is a damn crime, why even use them?
It's also the game's reliance on Simon Says style enemy design which you touched on with grab breaks & armor but in general they have a specific move or response they want you to do and they forcefully make everything else feel clearly inferior. Look at those drones that shoot lasers - a pain in the ass unless you do a single dive kick, after which they're trivial.
That said, it's a decent game, I don't regret buying it and will probably get a 1cc of Gnarly before moving on. Certainly a lot better than the vast majority of western 2D beat em ups besides SoR4 and FnR. Also I am hoping that if people start complaining they will patch a lot of these issues because a lot of it is easily fixable.