Depends what you mean by button mashing. Do you mean not really having a good grasp on controls and just hitting buttons like, for instance, a person playing Soul Calibur for the first time? Or do you mean an effective strategy is just standing in front of an enemy and just hitting attack as fast as you can?

On easy-auto, the former might work well. I don't know. On normal, you won't get far doing that. As for the latter, mashing the button actually results in a combo (on normal--on easy, you do combos automatically with a single press).

On normal, rapid presses = three hit combo. Staggered presses = four or five hit combo. Two staggered presses then rapid pressing = "stabby" combo. Then for some flair, finish the combo with a special move, like Stinger or High Time.

Anyway, for the puppet enemies and sin reapers that appear on the first two stages, you're not going to have to use a lot of strategy to get by. But if something's not working well, try something else. I remember Crawl saying that the reapers took forerver to kill, which was tedious. I imagine he was trying to beat them with the sword, which WOULD be tedious. You can kill them very quickly with the shotgun.

Once you meet Shadows (the cat enemies), Frosts, and Death Reapers, you'll have to know the ropes pretty well.