I think the slightly uncanny valley happy and sad hellspawn really adds to the experience here.
Not necessarily a criticism of the game, but I hit back habitually to escape menus a few times, and not being able to skip back to where I was before as a little frustrating. If you could do that irritating thing pages do to disable back, I think it'd help defend idiots like me from ourselves a lot!
There is a wealth of content in tie-based puzzling, it seems. I had fun!