I felt bad about leaving so much criticism in frustration and after cooling off a bit I played through the game again in its entirety. A very important thing in the game is pressing R to restart the stage. I was expecting the game to be something that I could claw my way back up from if I got knocked down too many power levels, but it feels more like trying to string together a combo throughout the stage and if you mess up in the middle, you need to reset.
That's not a bad thing at all, but I misunderstood that being the angle and must have overlooked the R to restart thing the first time. First attempt, any time I messed up I would just sit back and wait for the train to try again. Re-rating your game with a new perspective, sorry for not understanding it the first go around