Yo!
Thank u for the very verbose post! There's a lot of super-useful information here, and most importantly it confirms a LOT of current beliefs about how all this can be improved. Especially ur points about having a very large arsenal of moves and techniques, but not enough incentive to use them. There are some really cool dopes ideas here. And yeah the kick techniques atm feel a bit like an afterthought, but one idea i've been considering (and you've alluded to this as well) is making the kick have more of a launching/space-and-repositioning type of role, while the sword is ur primary damage dealer. Since there aren't that many 2d metroidvanias with large emphasis on detailed melee and movement options, I have to spend a LOT of time experimenting w/ that dicotemy from scratch. It's a novel, flexible set of tools, but rest assured I really wanna polish, justify, and really make worth them worth mastering (hopefully without having to make requirements for a certain technique on a certain enemy feel too contrived, though maybe I'll have to break that rule initial to teach players more effectively)! I already have plans to revamp the stagger/juggle system so it isn't a free combo on say larger enemies (i have a notebook w/ like 20 different ideas on how i wanna approach that, but i think i have a good first candidate to integrate in the coming weeks~).
For now, I'll spend some time this weekend fixing A. the potential to die during a cutscene, B. making the walljump height less finnicky, and C. easier backflippin + backflip midair control. But rest assured, I'm putting all your points and bullets into a handy-dandy .txt TODO list and will use that to continue polishing this demo, and of course the final game. You're love for the genre is very clear - otherwise you wouldn't have written a very thorough post for me.
Thank you SO MUCH for your support :D I look forward to updating the build and polishing the heck out of Warp Soldier.
- Mr. Thee