Struggling to love this game, any advice?
I am totally taken with the core gameplay and aesthetics of this game, and I want so badly to keep improving and progressing, but I feel like I'm at a wall and practice isn't doing any good. The big issues I'm struggling with are visibility, interacting with shielded/orange enemies, and Cider's damage output.
I play coop with my wife, who typically uses Galandra. We've beaten Azra a couple times, but never with lives for fighting Absolum.
I love playing Cider for the technical combo options and have spent a lot of time practicing various strings, but no matter how well I feel like I play, I'm always stuck doing an unimpressive fraction of other characters' damage in coop. Radiance falls behind by the first or second fight every time. It feels trolley inherent to Cider's moveset, and I'm not sure why or how to overcome it, but it doesn't feel good to put a ton of effort into working on combos only to just be distracting a few enemies while the other player has to do all the heavy lifting.
The biggest issue is without a doubt visibility. The screen is so incredibly cluttered. Avoiding damage feels like it has to come down to either luck or overpowered builds that can wipe out crowds without any risk (which tends to come Galandra or Brome arcanas, never Cider). I practice and practice dodges, deflects and clashes, but it just does not feel possible to read the telegraphs of every enemy on the screen at once, many of them concealed by stacked enemies and visual effects, so that I can use these tools with any real intent later in a coop run.
That is exacerbated by orange and shielded enemies, who are impossible to interact with aside from these techniques or a throw. So every time they spawn, some HP is witled away, until ultimately the run comes to an unsatisfying end due to gradual damage attrition that feels random and impossible to anticipate or even really understand. Or we've beaten Azra but without any satisfaction knowing we aren't allowed to try Absolum due to no extra lives, which I know has been talked to death elsewhere.
I know this is more of a rant, but I'm curious if anyone has unexpected mental tricks or insight into how to handle coop screen clutter or Cider's apparent weak damage