Thanks for giving it another shot.
VFX are definitely on the to-do list.
I don't think I'll be making the player follow the camera's orientation any time soon, but I'll make a note to fiddle with how much the camera can move away from the player during lock-on. Could easily be a setting.
It seems like V-sync is on by default in Unity. I'll make a note to figure out how to disable it in the options.
Thanks for the heads-up on the ready animation stuck, I really thought I'd found all the cases that could cause that.