I'm basically just button-mashing my way through life and somehow haven't died yet.

yet.

Same, but sometimes I forget to recharge the controller

How else do you figure out what the button does?

It's all worth it when you finally figure out how to do the fireball attack.

Got burnt by consequences of button mashing that, for the most part, I ended up just letting the game be, controller in hand, zero input due to paralysis.

Saaame, but I'm starting to question if my controller is actually even plugged in