Did a quick run, were just a slither away from getting the boss this time.
I picked banana as active just to try it the new version out, and damn it is it fun to line up a bunch of small enemies and just wreak havoc on them, especially with flare!
A thing I saw last time but I think I forgot was that hitboxes on the stage with a hole in the middle and one flying platform has really funky hitboxes for the health pickup. They sometimes fall through mainly the left platform.
I picked orbiting flame as a passive, and I basically just spammed the fire key to get as many as possible, and then rolled through the enemy to just slam them with them with all the flames. It's pretty fun but it doesn't that that much skill to be honest. So maybe that's something to balance.
Just here is what is going on in my mind during a battle: press fire, dodge bullet, maybe peek the clip if I'm fancy, a lot of smol jumps. I literally never look at the passives to see what I'm gonna get, I just shoot shoot shoot. It's maybe not the bast way to play but it's the way I do it anyways.