Now most of my gripes with this aren't yelling at the cloud for an Early Access game lacking features or being poorly optimized, which it is. (There's big frame drops on some stages even on good hardware, and the game has a lot of tiny loading screens for the weirdest of places(reinstalling game to SSD does not help the slightest)
Just opening the list of tutorial stages requires a loading screen, but then actually launching one also does)
And it isn't even about there being the single overpowered character in the form of Youmu.
The issue comes from the fact that the core of this bullet hell fighting game favors melee above else.
Really most of my issues come from that, but is it odd to expect a flying arena shooter game of THE bullet hell franchise to have exciting danmaku duels and not Dark Souls dodge roll enemy melee and whack with sword while they recover?

It lacks the promised additional modes still and even most of the story, so it isn't something I'd recommend like Acceleration of Suguri 2 even without the online aspect for how fun with CPUs it can be.
And the online is so heavily unbalanced and skewed to the simplistic melee playstyle that I would not currently recommend based on that either.

Now I did actually enjoy myself playing this game to to great lengths at first with the CPUs and against friends.
But playing against friends quickly started to grow annoying as they figured out that the secret is to just dash cancel melee combos over and over again.
Playing against melee CPUs is more fun because they don't aggressively dash cancel everything and single-mindedly ignore most other game mechanics in favor of melee, you can back dash away and fire some spread homing spells as flare countermeasures to get them to consider blocking and slow their approach, but a player will just take that as free grazing

Game wise the travel time of bullets inferior to dash cancel melee stunlocks in terms of ability to see it coming and the weight they have.
Bullets having less stun than melee does, and travel time still making it harder to combo, not to mention bullets being able to be grazed to feed your opponent meter.
Even the Master Spark, the series' famous heavy hitter, doesn't have enough weight to guarantee to stop someone in their tracks, they can break out of it being lightly singed, but even if the full blast hits, you don't have much more stun on the enemy than your basic melee.
There's really no stun focused short range projectiles, or heavy hitter attacks to send opponents flying out of range where it would be not be easy to just get back to doing basic melee.

The only way you can really break out of a melee combo is by using Spark Drive, which costs you 2 bars of drive meter(you start the battle at 0% meter), but it is also for some inexplicable reason tied to the same button as Accel Drive(can activate at 1 bar), so if you don't notice you're lacking a bit of meter to break free of the combo, you instead just waste the meter self buffing while being pummeled to death.
Paradoxically in some matchups you don't actively fire any bullets so your opponent couldn't graze them get drive meter to use the one thing that can counter melee combos.
You really have nothing to deny melee compared to other bullethell fighters like Senko no Ronde or Acceleration of Suguri 2, no high stun/knockback mid range bullets, can't drop tripwires that stun those charging in, can't crate a bullet vortex to hide into, can't have your weapons orbit around you in a defensive formation hitting anyone approaching too close, or a repulsion aura.
Blocking of melee is so ineffective the game turns into the dark souls style, wait enemy to attack with melee, roll to the side, hit them back with your own melee, the only addition to it is the animation cancelling to combo the melee, but in the end it is just stamina managing your boost meter and practice timing your simple rotation.

I don't really regret spending money on this, I do want to see it hopefully steer itself towards the glimpses of fun gameplay I had from it, hopefully that helps, but I really can't recommend this to anyone else in its current state, even as far as Early Access in concerned, the poorly thought out melee undermines most of the game's mechanics.
And the focus seemingly being more of on the content updates for the roadmap getting out on time than more in depth balancing trials to rethink the core of it as is.
With Meiling highly likely being another melee character to add to the existing ones, I don't have hopes it will improve in the near future, but I do hope it gets overhauled by the full release.

Now most of my gripes with this aren't yelling at the cloud for an Early Access game lacking features or being poorly optimized, which it is. (There's big frame drops on some stages even on good hardware, and the game has a lot of tiny loading screens for the weirdest of places(reinstalling game to SSD does not help the slightest) Just opening the list of tutorial stages requires a loading screen, but then actually launching one also does) And it isn't even about there being the single overpowered character in the form of Youmu. The issue comes from the fact that the core of this bullet hell fighting game favors melee above else. Really most of my issues come from that, but is it odd to expect a flying arena shooter game of THE bullet hell franchise to have exciting danmaku duels and not Dark Souls dodge roll enemy melee and whack with sword while they recover? It lacks the promised additional modes still and even most of the story, so it isn't something I'd recommend like Acceleration of Suguri 2 even without the online aspect for how fun with CPUs it can be. And the online is so heavily unbalanced and skewed to the simplistic melee playstyle that I would not currently recommend based on that either. Now I did actually enjoy myself playing this game to to great lengths at first with the CPUs and against friends. But playing against friends quickly started to grow annoying as they figured out that the secret is to just dash cancel melee combos over and over again. Playing against melee CPUs is more fun because they don't aggressively dash cancel everything and single-mindedly ignore most other game mechanics in favor of melee, you can back dash away and fire some spread homing spells as flare countermeasures to get them to consider blocking and slow their approach, but a player will just take that as free grazing Game wise the travel time of bullets inferior to dash cancel melee stunlocks in terms of ability to see it coming and the weight they have. Bullets having less stun than melee does, and travel time still making it harder to combo, not to mention bullets being able to be grazed to feed your opponent meter. Even the Master Spark, the series' famous heavy hitter, doesn't have enough weight to guarantee to stop someone in their tracks, they can break out of it being lightly singed, but even if the full blast hits, you don't have much more stun on the enemy than your basic melee. There's really no stun focused short range projectiles, or heavy hitter attacks to send opponents flying out of range where it would be not be easy to just get back to doing basic melee. The only way you can really break out of a melee combo is by using Spark Drive, which costs you 2 bars of drive meter(you start the battle at 0% meter), but it is also for some inexplicable reason tied to the same button as Accel Drive(can activate at 1 bar), so if you don't notice you're lacking a bit of meter to break free of the combo, you instead just waste the meter self buffing while being pummeled to death. Paradoxically in some matchups you don't actively fire any bullets so your opponent couldn't graze them get drive meter to use the one thing that can counter melee combos. You really have nothing to deny melee compared to other bullethell fighters like Senko no Ronde or Acceleration of Suguri 2, no high stun/knockback mid range bullets, can't drop tripwires that stun those charging in, can't crate a bullet vortex to hide into, can't have your weapons orbit around you in a defensive formation hitting anyone approaching too close, or a repulsion aura. Blocking of melee is so ineffective the game turns into the dark souls style, wait enemy to attack with melee, roll to the side, hit them back with your own melee, the only addition to it is the animation cancelling to combo the melee, but in the end it is just stamina managing your boost meter and practice timing your simple rotation. I don't really regret spending money on this, I do want to see it hopefully steer itself towards the glimpses of fun gameplay I had from it, hopefully that helps, but I really can't recommend this to anyone else in its current state, even as far as Early Access in concerned, the poorly thought out melee undermines most of the game's mechanics. And the focus seemingly being more of on the content updates for the roadmap getting out on time than more in depth balancing trials to rethink the core of it as is. With Meiling highly likely being another melee character to add to the existing ones, I don't have hopes it will improve in the near future, but I do hope it gets overhauled by the full release.