I think most of my comments were covered by other commenters, but I'll lay it all out here anyway.  Full Disclosure, I wasn't able to get very far.

Overall I think there's a lot of fun stuff here and I'd love to play an updated version if you decide to keep working on it and submitting to a future SMVM.

Story: I liked the overall vibe here but I think would have appreciated a bit more "show" rather then "tell". the intro cutscene was pretty cool but I think it over-explained some things and could have been reduced to about 25% of the current length. then you could sprinkle in more of the color-commentary later on.  I also would have appreciated the game only triggering a cutscene a single time per 'life' so I didn't have to hear about the red fog power so many times :)  

Overall there's a lot of Lore here and it really makes the world feel unique and somewhat mysterious.

Gameplay:  The controls felt a bit floaty and I felt myself wanting to 'feel' more in the combat. The sprites changed colors when getting hit or hitting monsters, but for some reason this wasn't enough for me to really feel like I was engaged in the fight.  I think SFX would help and maybe some sort of 'force' when sprites are hit to push them back or stop momentum.   

I think adding some screen transitions would be helpful.  Same for music transitions. maybe fade the old track out as you fade the new track in. 

I had a pretty inconsistent experience with jumping. Sometimes I could jump really high and sometimes I could barely get half as much airtime. I thought maybe it was momentum based, but that didn't seem to be it. Also, I think adding some sort of 'coyote' time when walking off ledges would be very helpful. The edges of the ledges are often lush grass, which sometimes makes it difficult to know where the true end is so coyote time (allowing the player to not start falling immediately after walking off a ledge) could be helpful to provide a bit more forgiveness for some of the jumps). 

Had one situation where I left the game for about 5 minutes then came back and died then when it respawned, the game was entirely black.  I managed to get it back by (I think) trying to walk out of one level into the next then back).   There was another situation where pressing the dash button always respawned me back to level 1 (with the vertical column of light scene playing like I was respawning again).  I was unable to reproduce both of these issues.

In the High Boots level, I couldn't read the sign in the bottom left since it was behind a parallaxing tree. 

Minor gripe that when I would jump on the roof in the starting locations and leave the screen, I would spawn in the new screen at ground level, not on the roof (from a gamedev perspective I get why this is happening but as a player I wanted to still be on the roof :)).  

The intro cutscene said that I was brought back but part of the contract was to give all of the Souls to the demon who brought me back.  Maybe I never made it far enough but I wasn't able to figure out if Souls were something that was actually part of the gameplay? or if that was just flavor text.

After finding the High Jump boots, I was not able to figure out how to exit that level.  I kept trying to make the jump to the far right to get out of the level but it didn't seem like the boots were making my jump higher and I wasn't able to leave on the left.  There was another jump in the top middle that I tried to get to but it also didn't work.  I'm hoping to try to play again sometime to try this out some more but I'm open to tips (either here  or you can DM me on discord).

I agree that the insta-death is pretty tough, but I think with maybe some intermediate checkpoints or not always playing the voiceovers every time could help that feel less frustrating. 

Graphics:  really solid! great style! I love how this game has a very distinct feel to it that I don't think I've seen very often.  The player art is great and I really like the parallaxing effects.  

Minor gripes that some of the button text doesn't quite work when everything else is so stylized, but I'm assuming that's probably due to the one month limit. Hopefully something could be addressed if you decide to keep updating the game. 

Audio:  I loved how there were multiple music tracks for the various areas and they all felt distinct yet connected.  See my comment above on maybe considering some better music transitions between levels.    

You really need some SFX though (which I think has been discussed below).  When I first killed a skelly I didn't really realize the stuff it spit out were actually pickups and not just random graphic bits that it dropped. I suspected they were pickups and when I finally stared at my HP/Stamina meters while picking them up and seeing them change, it confirmed it, but I think it would have been more satisfying to hear some sort of audio cue when picking them up.   Similarly with the combat, having some sort of 'hit the enemy' sfx and 'enemy dead' sfx would have helped the combat feel.  

I did like the player sfx (walking, jumping, dash, fight) so I think you are on the right track there.

Enjoyment:

I had fun playing but due to dying a bunch and the handful of glitches and having to sit through the cutscenes (after restarting the exe, or in the red fog level), I had a hard time grinding through the learning curve to make it very far.  However that said, I really really want to know more about the story and this player. What is the ulterior motive of the demon who brought the player back to life? what other sorts of moves will the player learn? etc.  So I hope you keep working on this and I'll keep an eye on your studio and this game in case you make an update for a future SMVM.  

Awesome. The art style is amazing and the feel and charm is great! I loved the music, it really fit the game and changed dramatically and apropriately. The voice acting was quirky and a little grating, but it fit the character. The jokes didn't land for me, but that may just be me.

It was hard not to trade with enemies constantly. They don't always drop health, so eventually you are guaranteed death if you don't hit an instant death pit. The fall speed was really fast too, way to fast to react. And the double jump just doesn't work if you're falling? There were times I wanted to save myself from falling fast but the double jump didn't go off. I understand due to the timing this could have prevented the poliosh necessary to make combat great. It's good! Don't get me wrong, but a little too challenging to be brought back to square one every time you died (again a checkpoint could have been implemented if there was more time.)

All in all, I loved the world you guys built and the music was great! The art is my favorite part and the dash mechanic is really cool. Great work!

Wow this game is oozing with personality and style. The quality of audio and graphic is very high. I especially like the look of the enemies.  Gameplay wise, the instant death pits might be a little brutal for someone like me that isn't terribly good at platforming game. But I can see more resurrection point would easily offset that.  Sometimes, my character would standup briefly after a jump like he has made it on the edge of the cliff  and then falls down the cliff.  It's not a real big deal, just something I noticed. Not all the features that are visually presented in the game are working, but I can totally understand it's hard to get everything in and running in a jam game.  The phase shifting ability is very interesting,  I feel bad that I am a little too dumb to figure out how to use it properly by myself.  Consider put in a little in game hint on how to use it? 

Overall it is a very cool looking game and I hope you keep on polishing it. :)

Hi, I just spent some time playing The Phantom Blade & I have lot of comments about it.

First of all, I loved the music and graphics & wouldn't change a thing about them. The music was especially good & fit the atmosphere well.

The gameplay was good. Jumping, attacking, and Phase Shift all felt good and were intuitive to use. The attack's range felt short, but it would probably feel better if there was more feedback when taking and dealing damage, such as changing the character sprite during invincibility frames, knocking back the enemy and/or character, sound effects, etc. I don't expect all that in a game jam entry so it's no big deal, and I'm sure you would've added that stuff on your own given more time. I had even less of that stuff in my game, after all!

I have quite a few criticisms, but I don't think the game is bad or anything, I just wanted to mention everything I could think of so that you might be able to improve your game with the feedback me & other players give.

The audio is very quiet. The voiceover is somewhat hard to understand because of the distortion effect, and it was made even harder since I had the volume on very low at the start. I would suggest having subtitles on the screen during the voiceover so that's not a problem. It might be good to turn the volume up too, since I had to increase it quite a bit from the level I had it at watching youtube videos at full volume.

A few glitches: The resurrection button doesn't work if you click away from the screen. I'm not sure exactly when that behavior happens, but it seems like clicking away during the end screen and then clicking back always made it so the resurrection button didn't work.

If you press "continue" after dying, you start over, but if you get to the chest with the Boots powerup, you don't get the powerup.

Edge grabbing was glitchy. It was easy to get into a position where I appeared to be standing, but couldn't jump or move onto the platform, I could only fall back off the platform.

Some jumps or falls are blind. I recommend making it so the player can always see where they're jumping or falling to, especially since you have instant death pits. You could also give the player some control over the camera to allow them to look up and down.

I had a few problems on the far left screen. On the right of the screen where you enter, if you walk all the way to the right on the bottom level, you can't see your character because of the automatic camera, but you fall into a pit and die. The other thing was on the far left side. There is gap between platforms that is very small and you can just barely fit through. I actually stopped trying the first time I got there and went around the other way because I thought you couldn't get through the gap. It would be good not to have gaps that tight, especially since the player can't really judge exactly how the player's hitbox and the platform hitboxes line up. One more thing that happened on this screen - I used up all my mana after killing all the monsters, and if you do that while on the bottom level, you can't progress anywhere and have to kill yourself or close the game window.

There were a few other things I'd like to see, but I didn't expect them in a game jam version due to time limitations.

It would be nice to let people use the d-pad on the controller as well as the analog. Unless the movement is actually analog (i.e. the character runs if you move the stick all the way & walks slowly if you move it partway) then it's just a matter of preference whether you use d-pad or analog stick, and many players, maybe even the majority, prefer d-pad with 2D platformers. It is easier to avoid accidental inputs for one thing. It's good to allow people with different preferences to enjoy the game the way they want to, and it shouldn't be too hard to implement.

I also noticed that in the first cut scene, there is a flashing light, and it might trigger epileptic seizures. I don't know a ton about what triggers it or not, but it would be good to allow the player to disable screen flashing in the options. Again, it's not something I expect in a game jam, just something to do when you have the time to add all the features you want in a finished product.

I would also allow the player to use the controller to activate Resurrection on the death screen instead of requiring the mouse, and it would be good to let the player skip cut scenes.

It's definitely a good start to a game, and I hope you can keep expanding it!

Finally beat the master samurai on my second try! That was awesome. The voice over was a nice surprise! You don't often get VO in game jams. It was well done and had funny dialogue.

Gameplay was fun, but I felt like it could have been tighter. The jumping was a bit slow and floaty, which I guess fit for a ghost. Also, it was difficult to tell whether you were in range of the enemies and were going to hit them or get hurt. I think a bit of feedback like hit/hurt stun would have helped here.

 The art was really good, and I enjoyed all of the characters -- especially the masks and the final boss. He reminded me of something from TMNT.

Overall a great job!