Sadly this was too hard, I couldn't get past the first battle. I had times I'd hit the key to fire and nothing would happen, which didn't help either.
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That seems like a very strange bug! If anyone else experiences it I hope they let me know. The battles were designed to be so easy they were nigh impossible to die in unless you forget to shoot, so something went very wrong here.
EDIT: BG was able to expose a weakness in my action sequencing and/or gameplay instructions that I totally neglected to consider! Many thanks to BG for shoring up my blind spots.