These kinda paragraphs is what it's all about! Thank you for taking the time. I definitely took the route of adding as much as I can instead of polishing things. The difficulty is quite overtuned for sure, even after I buffed the values. I think you are right about RNG and high score not working very well together and I think the score system will take a backseat over other mechanics I'm thinking about, because I feel like the current design is very limiting. I often hear complaints about not being able to aim melee strikes, so I might finally add 8-directional aiming for this one (I do have reasons for that :) ). This won't solve your case in particular (there's aim time for attacks that I can only reduce, not remove), but will definitely allow for more control. What do you think about that?