Really enjoyed this devlog. Hope next time I can write one half this good.
Now that Godot is being used so widely as the go-to replacement for Unity, maybe it will lead to more features and lots of improvement to existing features. In the meantime, if you want to experiment with other software, in my experience GDevelop gives better control over animations and their speed than you described from Godot, and particle effects usually are set to destroy when done, though the user can uncheck it.
They have a nice online demo of the software and templates for every kind of game including a basic platformer.