How do i enjoy this?

>Nothing flows well
Like combo wise? What are you having trouble linking?

Have you unlocked any moves? People who are deep into the games seem to habitually forget that the starting kit is pretty barebones, especially Nero’s and V’s (Dante’s is a little better in 5 when he starts than in, say, 3).

beacuse you are. but you will get better at it.

Rebind shooting to L2. L1 is lock on, R2 is revving, R is a jump. This way you can always charge up your shots, and it's easier to combine different moves into strings.

This

I'm only 2 hours into the game (of which almost 1h was cutscenes) so i've only unlocked the level 2 grapple and the sprint between combat.
also the game crashed on me once so i had to redo part of the second mission.

so it's just that the basic kit is very barebones huh

Jumping gives the most i-frames so use that as your primary way to dodge attacks

does gerbera dodge have i-frames?

Yeah. As someone who'd played all the previous DMC games it definitely took a little while until I felt like I could start doing the shit I wanted to do. Nero is very beginner friendly and the game makes a conscious decision not to throw people into the deep end, for better or for worse depending on your perspective. Once you start unlocking more devil breakers for Nero and get more of his moves the game starts to give you a lot more freedom to experiment. When you get to Dante the gameplay shines the brightest with his multiple weapons and styles. Things will start to come together for you, it's just a bit of a "slow" start.

It does but you need to be careful with it. If you get hit at the start of the dodge it'll break. I usually use it in the air to get away from boss attacks or ranged enemies attacks.