Hey, thank you very much. Not just for playing the game, but for taking your time to write a little bit about your experience.
Yes, something that became evident very early in playtesting was that the game is quite difficult, at least to players who are inexperienced with rhythm games. For the most part, I'm actually fine with that-- Even if I were to rebalance the game from scratch, I would probably stick with the decision to only have one difficulty option-- but I feel like I could have given players a better opportunity to get used to the controls and such before tossing them headfirst into some fairly tough fights.
Thanks a million for the support, and for sharing your thoughts.
Oh, and as for the controller support, I can't give you an easy answer as to why it didn't work. Personally, I've only tried using an XBOX controller and a few Nintendo Switch controllers (one first party, the other from Hori). Others have had mixed results using PlayStation controllers, it seems like it just sort of works for some people on some machines, but not for others. No idea why. It might be a GameMaker thing, it might be related to the input library I'm using, it might have to do with drivers. No clue.