you touched on a lot of really juicy subjects!! i'll be thinking about how to make it clearer when the player is being hit and how to avoid dying, and i've been trying to find a good compromise for what the lock-on effect is achieving right now - it's just simply too hard to hit enemies without something to help you "aim". someone had the cool idea of having an ability to somehow slow down time to aim yourself, or i was thinking that maybe on hit you had a split second to change your direction so you could chain together several enemies in sequence in a more directed way. i dunno.
as for temp invulnerability on hit, there is already a buffer time for dying (the flashing and beeping when you're at 0 blood) so i dunno if i want to add even more of that or else it might be too difficult to actually die ever, but i am thinking about ways to circumvent it. maybe something like earthbound where instead of taking damage all at once it's sort of spread out over time (though it would be a much shorter time for this game, lol. and you're right about the weird reflecting missile hitboxes - i think i'll just have a bigger circle area thats active all around you when you're slicing for reflecting missiles. collision is one of the harder things to make feel right in this game - i'm trying tho.
thanks so much, really!