Thoughts/Questions about melee weapons

[Veleric]

I picked up EK a few days ago and have about 6-8 hours in at this point and am mostly having a great time with it. I'm only playing solo as of yet so keep that in mind. I've really liked the feel of the game with regards to the ranged weapons, but all I can think while using the melee weapons (with a bit of an exception for the scythe) is that the risk just feels way higher than ranged for very little in the way of reward. When you have perfect room clear relics that offer significant boosts per run, it either makes you play way slower and more patiently than you'd like or you basically get 1/2 or 1/3 of the perfect clears that you would with ranged.

While many games have weapons with a higher skill floor/ceiling than others, what I'd like to know is for the average player, does melee ever really get better? Does it truly become as viable as ranged or is it always going to be harder without a significant. I can already tell that I'm able to progress further and take less damage after several runs with each, but it's mostly because I'm forcing myself to try to improve rather than go back to the more comfortable ranged weapons.

I've seen a few posts on this over the last few years, but looking for more recent thoughts/feedback on this with the new DLC (which I own).

[Vid]

It's a matter of playstyle isn't it?
Sword is mainly good because you have the fastest recovery time after rolling so you can dodge a lot of impossible to get out of situations while still attacking

I won't mention how late game you can create builds that are so busted that you don't need to be in melee range for. Mainly 6-8 hour mark

I would say swords fall off later and skills become more useful. But that's about the same in every hacknslash roguelike

[JORAX]

I'm somewhat new to the game and also feel like melee is pretty tough to do much safely beyond dash attacks. Seems like much of the time I try to do a 3 hit combo or charge attack I'm punished unless it is on the last enemy. I've completed one run with each weapon and am starting to unlock more skills and mods, but haven't noticed a big change to this overall so far.

[Pickle Bath]

I think it's just a learning curve - staying safe with ranged is definitely easier. But there's a lot of advantages to melee weapons - the sword is insanely mobile once you get the dash-charge (I think it should have been called the dagger), the hammer has amazing and versatile crowd control, etc.