Thanks for trying out the demo!
Yeah, I've been playing around how punishing I wanted the reload to be (same with cycling with the slide), for now I erred on the more forgiving side but that's something that I want to put into a difficulty setting. Interestingly, the flow ended up way more punishing as you pointed out, describing how you went through is definitely useful. Glad you enjoyed the game, and congrats on making it to the end without a revolver still!