Very cool game with gorgeous artwork and character animations, and a great soundtrack, but very labyrinthine and confusing!
I had to press every button on the keyboard to find out that U/I switched between equipped items (I don't think it was mentioned in the description), and then even more trial and error to figure out how to actually use the relic (that it only gave me a limited window in which to strike enemies with the sword). In general, I think having to use the relic basically every time you want to attack is very redundant and hurts the pacing of the game a lot.
(It might help a bit if the relic was its own dedicated keybind, rather than having to constantly switch back and forth. If there can be three keybinds, one for using and two for switching back and forth, then there might as well be one keybind for using each of the three items individually. The math is the same but it's much more convenient for the player! That said, I still think it'd be best if you could just attack enemies.)
The ladders also seemed a bit buggy. Enemies were able to push me off the ladder and my character would be stuck in the air playing the climbing animation. In one spot (near a cave at the bottom of the large waterfall behind the town), I was able to climb an invisible ladder. Not being able to move left and right on the ladder was also a bit annoying, since I couldn't pass through the gap at the top if I started climbing too off-center.
It was also hard to actually get off the top of the ladder, as my character would often just fall back to the bottom like a rock. I basically had to align my character close enough to the side of the ladder so that she's land on one pixel of the platform after climbing to the top.
I did manage to find a bunch of pearls, but in the end, the slow-paced combat and exploration, and getting reset all the way back to the beginning every death, was a bit too punishing for me. Still, a very cool game whose style and ambition definitely lives up to the classics!