it's most likely a conscious developer decision to omit ranged weapons from the player to encourage them having to take risks to get any damage done to the enemy.
I don't doubt it, but I mean it's not like there aren't a dozen challenging games with ranged options where you still have to take risks. Famously, older metroid, megaman, and castlevania are pretty challenging before you've memorized the entire game after running through them a billion times (I know someone's going to come in here with a fat wet aaaaactually).
In fact, generally speaking, the melee was almost always easier, i.e. zero tended to be immensely easier to play as than megaman.
And this game in no way plays that smoothly anyway. I don't mind it being melee, just wish he had spent a little more time smoothing it out, the combat in this game isn't hard, it's frustrating because it's janky, and the best practices usually involve cheesy repetitive actions.
