Ok so I got through the first playthrough.
Yeah, prob. the biggest fault is too-many too-long auto-scroller set-pieces, for a game where you are guaranteed to die and replay everything a bunch. Maybe if you were real good they would be less of a drag but they at least seem to be intentional drags.
The ‘final’ stage was a cool and funny way to handle a boss-rush kinda thing.
As you can imagine there is a 2nd quest, with reworked “shadow” stages that I’ve yet to dig into. Plus a big empty space at the end of the stage select map, etc. Also, goofily you unlock turbo and slo-mo mode settings?
Good game, worth it to play.