The visuals and audio definitely carried this game. It's kinda weird though because I felt like it was meant to be pretty difficult, but with a cute aesthetics.
I figured out the "trick" to the gameplay is a sort of dash around and time your attacks thing, much like From Software games, which I'm no stranger to. But I do think the controls of the game diminish the experience a large bit since it was really hard to figure out what the character was doing and whether or not you had control etc. Coupled with a sort of weird bouncy physics and it's kinda chaotic and frankly frustrating to play.
The attack being bound to your current direction and coupled with a very slow turnaround creates a very unresponsive feeling for the controls.