That's a great angle for reference. When you put it that way I guess I should give regular shooting more use, and utilize small enemies and new gimmicks. Most people want everything easily gunnable so I failed to make the connection.
Wall jump went a long way of trying both variants. For parries it's probably essential, but I will do some tests to see if it's feasible to make both directions usable (maybe with a variant of the move). Vertical axis is the weak point of the parry - you can evade from ground, precisely manoeuvre with hover or spirit form in rare cases.
Spirit form got nerfed into the ground because it used to mow the entire level. It's about time I give it proper gliding controls.
I will try to a few hover variants to allow for independent shooting. That might help it evolve from a gimmicky meme game.
It sounds like you got the mechanics except for being able to bully the boss. Thanks a lot for the feedback!