Almost a pleasure to play this game again.
I like everything artwise (the new Halo effect when you are at full dakka speed is genius)
I love the mechanics, (great that you can missile ride, dunno if you could already to that last demo)
But I really hate your controls:
This is where your game lives and die. Your idea is great, art is superb, and your level design can be nothing special;
but if I can't control my avatar in a relayable way I can't play this shit
-Hovering feels bad because you need to switch your mouse 180°on a spot,
-Walljumps feels unrelayable maybe because the action window is too short;
-Parrying is better than last time, but still feels bad because you need to position yourself in a very specific way to do it right. If you get shot from above you can't parry (or at least I can't do it) and since your levels are pretty claustrophobic you will get shot from straight above you a lot.
-Spirit bullet should be rethinked as a whole, because a noob can use it only going straight down. With skill you can almost use it left/right, but the problem remains, because the levels are setup to go straight up (casings sea). So, right now this skill feel useless.
I don't think that by design you want ppl to apply themselves to do, for ex, a walljump+hover. This shouldn't be a problem. Like how a running mario can jump a pit in level one, this is the ease of action you need to implement.
I wanna love your game, but the tutorial is enough to make me hate it.
your level design is subpar:
-There is no reason to make the training so claustrophobic,
-There is no reason to make the spirit bullet tutorial in so little space. I know is for letting us know you can do it in little spaces too, but it's fukkin hard to do it, and this is the tutorial for the mechanic! make it at least a 2 step process, first in a setup with a lot of space, then in a enclosed one.
-Why at level one we only have destructible walls for platforms? you have grid platforms, can you at least for level one make a skeleton with grids in a way that we can always climb on something? do you still think it's fun to wait the sea of casing to rise up and let us continue playing? And I wanna make it clear by saying it twice, I like the mechanic by itself, I like the risk reward. But this is level 1. Come on.
In conclusion, my suggestion is to think more about your controls and ease of use as a whole, how hard/easy should be to pilot Brass mecha.
You can dev better level only if you start throwing shit at the wall and designing more levels. You should also try different design philosophies, and see what players like best. (if you wanna get a laugh go see my level design from dd48).
GL