Played some more now that I actually know how the air dash works:
- The air dash feels great, I wouldn't change how it works. It just needs to be better explained to the player.
- Enemies tended to be really annoying and not a lot of fun to fight. They were prone to getting right up in your face where you don't have time to respond to their attacks, and then kind of just... staying there, because they move as fast as the player even at full sprint.
- Game could really use an aiming crosshair. I felt like I was missing a lot of shots just due to struggling to tell where my gun was actually pointing.
Game was a lot more fun once I was able to experience more of the metroidvania elements, and I think the general idea of tying abilities to temporary pickups that later become permanent is really cool, it just lead to some frustration where I didn't see the ability prompts until long after they were useful. I did just completely miss the bit of tutorial text that said I could press tab to see that info though which would've really helped, though given someone else had the same issue I'm hesitant to say that's all on me.