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Thank you for playing, and I'm sorry you didn't like my design

The starting weapon is too loud, it feels more like a bonus superweapon.

Apart from the loudness, this seems neutral statement. Anyway this was my intention, a twist on the classic pea shooter from this kind of games. Your shoot is so powerful that knocks you back and pushes the enemy a km away. It's also very powerful so you can have a fastflow of combat.

 I don't like how moving forward on ground is slower than in air. 

It's a diagetic way to tell the player "you should always be airborne".

Strafing feels pointless (it's slow, meaning skilled play disincentives it, the exact opposite of skill-based mechanics). 

Strafing is useful when you need precision movement, like when there are a lot of bullets on screen but not many enemies. Not all levels are to be approached in a "gotta go fast" way, ofc I'm still a noob at designing levels for my game.

Managing both bombas and subweapons is too complicated.

In what way is too complicated? 

 Subweapons requiring ammo feels unnecessary. 

that's my fault, because I shower the levels with candles/energy. In a more classic situation (or later levels) energy should be scarce, and you should think about using your subw or save energy. It's also my fault for not putting in a maxEnergy cap.

Projectile spamming/spawning enemies should have a windup animation, so you don't get hit out of nowhere (e.g., those plants spawned enemies on top of me). Enemy spawners should have a limit, as eventually they fill the screen and become unwinnable. 

you are completely right on this.

Homing enemies trying to slam into you from your weapon's blindspots (up/down) feels lame, since not being able to aim up/down is artificial, and the game should not bring attention to that. 

I could agree on this, but: 

You can fly with no limits, so the weapon blind spot is more a positioning problem. 

More on that, the subweapons are designed to aid you with that 'flaw': axe helps you for up, granades for down, laser for center far enemies. Bomba also hits 360° (I could amp the range thou).

The mechanics feel slapdashed and don't blend together. 

On some level I can agree on this. I've basically pick mechanics from games I like and put them in a blender. There must be a reason why there are no level based shmups; why they are called run'n gun and not fly'n gun; and all action games are also platformers with a jump.

What can I say, I like to make strange stuff. I have a lot of hammering to do, but I hope someone will like this shmup hybrid.