Alright, second impressions time. I'm just gonna talk about Hazel since that's who I've been playing lately.
I'd really appreciate an advanced skill guide that covers intended speed tech. Wish I knew these when starting to learn to play fast. So far, I know these;
Midair ghost crescent to parry gives you a better speed boost than on the ground.
The higher your karma, the quicker your normal attack cycles.
If you do a midair parry without ghost crescent, it gives you the largest speed boost, but does not give you a double jump.
There's this thing where if you time a no-crescent midair parry it can push you high up. You're meant to be ascending and moving towards the target but I rarely get it to work when I want it to. Maybe it could be adjusted that if you buffer up, you can always get it to work?
Now this is probably not intended (..or is it?): I've noticed that if you're falling and warp to your target, you seem to slow down initially until doublejump is activated.
Now, general skill balance.
Down attack isn't even covered in the basic skill guide for some reason. While it has a niche, it's not as useful as I hoped. Most of the layout is horizontal stretches, so it's often better to simply midair ghost crescent and doublejump, as the "extender" effect acts as an inferior doublejump. There's also that in boss combat, the bouncing makes it very awkward to link up your attacks, resulting in overall lower DPS.
Possible solution (s): If you hold jump, you still get the bounce but if you don't, it pierces through the target instead. And make the speed boost stack if you down attack a target after air-parrying them. Maybe a 0.5 speed boost multiplier so singular midair parries are still the fastest - but there's still incentive to combo.
There's not much incentive to use the regular attack when ghost crescent + parry does more DPS and reach in the long run. And that can also give you S+!
Possible solution: Give regular attack more damage. I'd rather the combo not get nerfed so I don't feel an urge to down-patch. It probably already does more damage than crescent parry combo but the lack of utility, shots blocking, endlag and air reach gives little opportunity to use it. Also remove the slight push forward. I'm pretty sure casual players would appreciate these changes too.
Not balance but general gripes:
The way Raphi warps around the map randomly not attacking. It's not really a threat and even stalls time in casual play (and it's a pretty long boss!). You can't reach her or get damaged in this state so you're just standing there waiting for it to pass. If she was in a reachable state I'd probably tolerate this phase far more, but would also make casual play more engaging too.
Sorry for the wall of text.
I haven't replayed Axel but I'll probably give him a second chance sometime, now that I know more about how the combo system works and his full moveset.