Hi, and thanks for playing!
Good point about the save points. Maybe they're a strange inclusion right now given the lack of threat of losing progress and the ubiquity of their presence before boss fights. I'll have to think about whether they're really necessary.
Noted on the performance on Mandrake's (flower boss) final phase. That pattern runs fairly poorly on my PC too. I haven't really hunkered down and really optimized the engine yet, but I will surely do that before the final game is released.
I'm glad to hear you enjoyed fighting Orobas, he was a lot of fun to design. The last phase was supposed to inspire a sort of playful feeling of unfairness.
In regards to the abrupt starting to the Mandrake fight, I totally agree. There's a number of things like that which I plan to do eventually but which I determined were not totally necessary for the closed beta. I also don't like how the player and bosses just disappear instantaneously when they die, I plan to have death sprites eventually.
I'm glad you enjoyed the movement. I'm kind of divided on whether I should include more platforming-esque challenges, because a fair amount of player have have had difficulty interpreting the perspective of game. I try to use a consistent visual language for raised blocks that you can walk on, and raised blocks that are just walls. But, despite that, it's still very common for players to test whether they can walk right onto a cliff which is actually supposed to be like 5 tiles too tall. Maybe I'll just have to be really clever with my design and save the tricky stuff for optional secret areas/items.
I'm ecstatic to hear that you enjoyed the NPC interactions and little environment jokes. I'd like to think that some of the jokes definitely comes across as the sort of thing which could only exist in a game where the writer has nobody higher up to answer to suggest things like "Okay dude, maybe let's cool it with the archaic 19th-century pseudoscience references and the September-Eleventh joke??"
And yeah, I think maybe the decision to have a world with not so many NPCs is a bit at odds with the decision to make a dialogue-heavy game. I've tried to balance it out by giving them more to say than your average RPG game, but it's probably not a setting decision I'll make again. Your point about NPCs not having new dialogue in relation to things you've seen is one that has me thinking. I've spent a lot of effort making sure that NPCs have lines when you do something slightly unconventional or out of order, but I think adding new dialogue like you've described with be a better place to spend energy.
I agree that Sarcoph Augustus is probably too hard for easy, and I've tried to rectify that in the latest update. We'll have to see what playtesters say.
In regards to combat outside of bosses, please see my answer to modwhgmh.