I've been noticing that this game seems far easier when you're fighting upwards rather than down.

When I attack enemies below me, I can't see what the hell is going on. Mostly a gunner problem, but still, the lower edge of the screen is basically closer than my max range on pulsars and alchemers.
On the flipside, the top of the screen lets you look on further than you really need to and is a much easier angle to do gunning from.

When fighting vanaduke, it's easy to run into lava blocks that his body is hiding due to the camera angle.
It's also a bit difficult to gauge where the fire orbs are when you can't even see yourself behind him.
If vanaduke is at the bottom of the screen, it practically covers everything and makes avoiding falling debri and other enemies more difficult.
When fighting downwards, spinning slime attacks can come right out of nowhere, completely unexpected, with no time to block if you lag whatsoever.

I think having a more flexible camera system could help alleviate this a bit, but I fear that this game wasn't designed for that to be the case, and that a lot of optimizations probably involve model gaps that you normally can't see at the default angle.