hm to be honest jamestown is very beginner friendly; i played and finished it with a lot of non bullet hell player friends;

you need to take advantage of the consistency if you play it as two; time your shields for difficult parts; make dying a tactical desicion when you know you will blow up an enemy that drops an extra life soon (or when theres one on screen already)

can´t really recommend another game tough; didn´t play that many myself but id suggest you try to improve on this one especially since it has so many difficulty options where you can steadily improve yourself

fair enough ty

I really liked bullet heaven 2, which has an easy mode, and has a lot more levels even though sorter

I recently came upon a 2$ dollar bullet-hell game on steam that goes by the title "Wish Project". It looks really cheap and the story is more than bizarre but the balancing in that game is really awesome: "easy" is really easy and you can gradually work your way up to more challenging difficulties. Spend a few hours with your partner on that game and Jamestown will not appear that hard anymore if you return to it :)

Well we managed divine or whatever hardest difficulty was as a joke. We were constantly getting whooped during the mushroom stage (2?) and somehow got through hardest difficulty on another map somehow.
She wont leave the starting ship where as i tend to favour the one that lets u shoot a turret in one direction. Bomber i just gave up on, and charge shot is useful for some maps but hard when she wouldn't change... (alas partner and i are no-longer together, I said go charge she chose starter ship, it was destined to fail... among other things... me.... however I'm a gamer at heart and therefore wont stop,) will defo look up your suggestions, TY all.

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/39372135-Lists-of-Niche/list/79130/

Raging Blasters and Sky Force on that list are both co-op and not that hard as Jamestown.