Thanks for the feedback. The tutorial has had some significant updates and now includes checkpoints and a speed-up hotkey that can be used to skip through the messages. I also took on board your suggestion to speed up the gun's reload time and you were dead right. It feels much better now even though it technically does no additional damage per second.
Maybe you could download again and let me know if this solved your issues and I'll keep in mind your other points of feedback for later updates.
Update 1 & 2 Notes: https://itch.io/t/60660/updates-1-2-released-update-notes