Took me 14 lives to beat it, but what a fantastic ride it was. I went into it knowing nothing and really enjoyed it. The only criticism I have is that after the first few "runs" it gets super repetitive. I ended up just skipping most of the dialogue.
One suggestion would be to allow the player to set a "world state" for that particular run before starting it based on their past lives. So instead of going through all of the dialogue you could essentially "warp" to the next logical step in the story if that makes any sense.