I have to admit that combat is not juice galaxy's strongest point. I have three ideas on how to fix this regarding the weapons.
1. Make the weapons stand out from each other a bit more.
although the weapons have different designs and do different amounts of damage, they usually don't stand out from each other a lot in my opinion. An idea was that maybe you would need to like charge some weapons before they do any real damage? I don't know it's just an idea.
2. Ammo.
Currently, you don't really need to worry about losing ammo when using for example the pineapplegun. To make the game a bit more challenging, maybe add different variants of ammo scattered around the world. It would make guns more valuable than they are in the game right now.
3. Hoagen.
Hoagen isn't very useful right now in my opinion. The only thing he really does is make your weapons larger and harder to swing and more impactful. I think it would be cooler if the weapons had a stat system kind of like the player stats. Basically you would be able to change the blade of the weapon and make the weapon harder to break and things like that. It would still cost juice of course but it would make Hoagen more useful and more of an actual blacksmith.
of course these are all just my stupid ideas and opinions as always but I would like to hear your point on this! I always appreciate feedback.