I definitely understand where people are coming from.
-Too much dialogue, sometimes less is more, keep it brief, to the point and let the world tell you the rest. 'Exposition is the worst form of storytelling'
-Things as they stand are too tight, it's not even like a Mario thing of 'catch this cycle or it'll screw you over', there's just not really any room for any deviation at all. Either the dev route (goal) should have some time to spare within that cycle (finishing just after a sentry blast, player has a sparse few seconds to complete it) or the player should be able to survive one more blast than the dev managed it with (if they finished it by the skin of their teeth)
I would've been interested to see the harder version, had this bookmarked since then but didn't get around to playing it
I think you'd be better off distancing from incremental (the mastery kind of is but it doesn't feel significant enough with how to the wire everything is, even with maxed mastery) and leaning fully into the puzzle side
I understand it's easier to market incremental, but that's really not the heart of the game
Anyways, good luck if you continue developing this. Needs work but there might be something here
The dialogue not only is for story telling but also serve as tutorials for the puzzles that seem to hard as you say. Especially with the Mastery the final puzzles should be kind of easy, I will look into making it even easier. As for the incremental part, this is definitely incremental, just not idle like most
They aren't complicated, just strict
The vast majority of the dialogue is for narrative purposes, not teaching (and on that note there's so much text, particularly late in the game, which either duplicates, appears earlier than it should, or appears after the thing it's discussing has already been done)
Again I didn't get to play the earlier iteration but i'm not sure how much harder (less room for error) the original could've had in the final fight? There's very minimal room to do it any quicker than I did I feel
I enjoy hard games, wouldn't want it dumbed down, just a small degree of leniency (small as in an error of what actions you could take- travel in/out of the wrong area once) not just 'hey you get another second, unsure what you can do with it, but there you go'
I know that's not the simplest thing to do
For the text being long idk, I feel like it adds depth to the story later on, as for it repeating or appearing when it should not, that is totally possible as the conditions system behind it is pretty bugged and should be fixed.
The final fight can be still done by taking a full hit from the sentry, maybe even 2, especially if fully mastered, idk if you are doing the best sequence of actions but to me it seems like there is quite a bit of leniency, but I can look into making it more forgiving