A different way to make successive notes important would be for the "Combo" count to actually do something, which as far as I can tell it does not. Some sort of bonus score multiplier you get at certain levels of combo (or even literally just +1% score for each beat per combo, so a 127 combo is +127% points) would provide incentive to never miss a beat without making you suddenly fail because there's one fast section of a song you're bad at.
I did mention there are items that can give you more hearts aka more chances to miss notes without insta loosing its in the shop and cost 500 and i believe you can get 3 so you could miss 6 in a row and still be fine. As for the difficulty curve it is rather big difficulty curve ill admit but thats the thing with beat games, you adapt. If you dont want to spend the money you get thats kinda on you. But i get it my man.