Spoilers, so heads up.

I'm currently playing where you have to find Trip after bringing her to her village and learning the mechs are there, then you have to fight your way to the watch tower to get over to Trip. I'm playing on hard mode and I've had a pure blast up until this moment.

My issue? The Camera. I'm trying to fight 3-4 bots (including one that shoots at quite a range) but the camera is constantly zooming in and focusing or turning at the worst moment, so Monkey flies off to the left and completely missing the mech in front of him. When I turn the camera (which is sluggish and slow, even with sensitivity way up) the bots swoop me, multiple at a time.

Also, by this point I haven't done many upgrades, because I've genuinely been fine without them. I got heal regeneration, combat vision, increased health and counter. I've also very rarely had to block in this game. This is where the other part of the frustration comes in.

In no way did the game indicate that it was a *requirement* to have upgraded weapons here. I had to look up a walkthrough and see that essentially people had max weapons and could block and counter.

So I try blocking, thinking I should try counter and save myself some frustration... except Monkey doesn't block. Regardless if I hold or press it, he won't do it but randomly in battle, I'll try to do a combo to get mechs off of me and he'll block out of nowhere.

It's at the point where I can't progress because of a diva camera that sacrifices visibility in combat for the 'money(or Monkey) shots' along with the cheap tactics of the bots forcing you into a corner, then beating the crap out of you.

I'm really tempted to see if there's a way to mod the game to just pull the camera back a bit but it shouldn't take someone modding the game because a dev made a bad call in such a vital function.

The biggest frustration is that I can't go back to an earlier save and rapidly upgrade, because I'm using a single save since I started playing (this is my first playthrough too) and I feel pretty bummed that such an amazingly fun game has such a severe issue people have been complaining about for literal years and there's no fixes for it.

Any advice aside from starting a new save?