I too found fighting enemies to take up too much time, and just memorised the routes through the levels. By the end of the jam, the controls were so natural to me that I actually found maxing the speed stat easy to control, although, I will say, originally all the upgrades could be done 10 times, and if you did that with speed it was completely uncontrollable and far too easy to beat, hence the 5 limit. Thanks for the feedback!