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Incredible experience. Love the soundtrack. It was almost impenetrably dense, though, to me - I do enjoy an esoteric game that's hard to figure out, and I do not count myself as quite the smartest at figuring things out, but I don't think I would have realized there was anything to figure out if I hadn't been motivated to keep plumbing its depths by having seen that one comment before mine calling it one of the best games they'd ever played. YMMV, though.

I feel like there's more to crack that I haven't figured out, though. I've found the church with the bow symbol that raises your speed, and solved each bow puzzle in each dream world, but I haven't been able to find anything past that, if there even is anything.

No problem, and cool!

I see where you're coming from with the story, I like the mystery of it. It also did seem from that last cut off line of dialogue that there was a very real answer that was just being left off as a sequel hook. I'm not personally a fan of stuff where the meaning behind an action or a metaphor is entirely up to interpretation, because then it just seems like it was put in without any actual meaning. A mystery as the intended meaning, though, is far more preferable to me.

Very cool to know I wasn't just speculating wildly about the mystery character. And yeah, I figured Makyo wasn't canon because the way Zlonyth interacts with the party very heavily conveys it, as well as the decisions and power scaling of the firstborn being pretty inconsistent (one ending she rises and immediately destroys the matriarch and then the earth in seconds, the other ending she rises and fuses with the matriarch to gain a form that is able to be defeated by the party regularly?) so it's pretty clear that it only exists because the environment and extra battles are cool.

It was really fun translating, though like I said I never quite got to mastering the language, I usually had to re-decode it based on what was implied by the letters I already had memorized. One of the main reasons I started is because I didn't actually know there would be a translation machine later to help me out, so it not being originally intended makes sense.

Incredible game. Just finished the full thing, with my final save clocking in at about 23 and a half hours. I hadn't the remotest idea it would be any considerable length at all when I downloaded it for free, let alone as long as a triple A game.

In terms of review I have quite a bit to say. I selected normal difficulty at the start, then promptly forgot I was given a choice, and spent most of the game thinking it was too easy. However even on normal I found Hell to be quite a challenge, and an enjoyable one at that. I'll likely revisit this game eventually and replay it on a higher difficulty; it deserves that. I beat Cephiti but absolutely could not beat the other boss in the area, so the balancing there might be a bit off, as you said Cephiti wasn't even meant to be beaten at all.

I love the writing in this game. You have a definite voice and it permeates the entire thing. Initially I wasn't a fan of how prominent it was causing it to affect the tone (though I didn't hold it against you, that tends to happen with indie games) but by the end it had fully won me over and I think the game overall is better for it. I do think the lighthearted and parodical tone of the game led to some of the big emotional beats, climactic moments, and plot twists feeling a bit more hollow than was probably intended, but honestly just playing around with the sounds, music, and pacing of those moments could probably fix every problem in that area. I'm also not a big fan of mysteries where the answer is "whatever you think the answer was" like some of the stuff in the ending looks to be, but the game was very good regardless. I hope Ellicide (I think that's the daughter's name?) returns in something in the future, since as far as I can surmise all Makyo-related content is non-canon. I'm not sure if all the meta talk and timeline reset is diegetic (my brain is poisoned from Undertale) or just a fun framing device to work Makyo in, but if it is diegetic I find it very compelling. Especially whoever it was asking me if I was satisfied with the game.

Oh, and the translation machine can go pound sand! I figured out both the codes on my own to the point that I could pretty reliably read any weird message I found. To be fair it usually took me a while to translate it out in my head, but I got to the point with one of them that some sentences I was reading like plain text. I think you should put some one-off dialogue in somewhere that's a mix of both codes just to throw any others like me for a loop. (This might not be possible, or it might already exist and I missed it.)

Anyway, lot of rambling to say amazing game and I'm definitely going to play more of your catalogue eventually.

Checking in with another Scarab Lord not dropping the card issue. I fixed it with regedit, but I figured it'd be worth mentioning that he dropped it just fine on my first playthrough, I only encountered the bug on my second. Not sure if that'll help narrow down what's causing it but hope it does!