I am utterly in love with this game. So much thought and effort went into it and it was thoroughly enjoyable! I was going to rate it five after the first stage but it continued to wow me. I could gush for a while about the excellent use of animation (including secondary animations), use of cinematography, suspense building, story-telling, characters - not to mention brilliant and varied gameplay. I appreciate that while there was a health system, there was no lives system and dying meant a short backtrack not a hg one.
My only contentions are 1) I encountered a bug with Malikai where he froze in his first damage animation. Fortunately, I killed myself on his orbs and could just restart the boss fight. 2) The movement is a little sluggish and made the last boss less reactive and more memorisation. 3) The navigation - especially early on with the side stairs - was a tad finicky. Also, the artwork, while not spectacular was polished enough to not cause resentment.
I'm going to search out the first chapter and look forward to the next one! Thanks Slyck!