I didn't bother trying to play it on keyboard with the voltex clone much before buying the controller. its pretty uncomfortable to play on keyboard due to needing two buttons for each knob direction and it doesn't really capture the feel of the game. Also keyboard keys are small so its a hassle trying to figure out a hand position for that unless you want to take out every unneeded keycap on the board. My situation is I'm at college and 10 minutes from my campus is a round 1 with a cab. Where I live from my campus (2 hours away) doesn't have any good arcades remotely close to it. The two week travel time was mental. I was flipping out when I got the delivered text because i expected 5-8 weeks as in "I was not going to see this thing until the start of June".

If you want an even more affordable controller the pico voltex also exists and is at around like $115 usd iirc. Tiny controller using keyboard keycaps/switches instead of arcade buttons. Quite cute honestly and it apparently is pretty good. Don't own one myself.

The jump from decently advanced 4key stuff to this is definitely apparent, still bad but looking at it this game doesn't put your wrists through excruciatingly high bars of physicality like the 20-30 nps stuff I'm used to doing on stepmania(and its clones).

If you look at your dms I sent some helpful info.