>>529571425
The axe kick, the followup lift kick, and the fact that they're contextual are all taken directly from God Hand. I mean that game literally has those attacks that's how they work too.
Also making it non-contextual would be a bad idea. An axe-kick is a move that launches on normal hit and hits grounded. Letting the player spam that whenever would be really bad balance. Same for the lift-kick: a kick that upgrades a launcher? Nah, keep it tied as an axe-kick followup, like God Hand did.

I'm going my own way for many parts of the combat but this is one part where the original devs knew what they were doing and I must respect it.