Developer, you really need to take a good, long hard look at yourself because I fear that you might be insane.
Why in the world did you hide an excellent Celeste-esque challenging precision platformer with smooth feeling physics and a unique tongue grapple mechanic behind not only one of the most boring bog-standard platformer segments, but then try to actually dissuade the player from continuing? I mean, do you want people to hate your game and miss out? Part of me admires the courage, but as said before, another part of me questions your sanity. Seriously, 9 times out of 10 I would've quit at around the second or third level of the starting sequence because it bored the hell out of me and I would feel fully within my right to assume the rest of the game would be just as boring.
So yeah, as said, the game is definitely pretty neato in many respects (at least eventually), but it does have some rough patches (yes, other than the fact that it starts terribly).
*For one, I found the most satisfying aspect of the game was jumping on enemies, but not only is this discouraged by the sword, but enemies are inconsistent in what you can jump on: for example, why can you not jump on bees when they would be the most exciting to be able to jump on for air travel? I can understand not being able to jump on porcupines, sure, they are spiky, but a bee's stinger isn't on its head! I'm hopefully that jumping on enemies becomes the main attack as the game goes on because it is infinitely more interesting and satisfying than the sword.
*During the platforming, I would have a lot of times where the spikes would screw me over by having hitboxes that were a bit too large. For example, I would tongue grapple so as to fly through a narrow gap that has spikes on the ceiling and floor, yet I would scratch a spike as I go through and die: if my tongue was able to go through without hitting spikes, so should I! There were also times where the spikes were just placed in very annoying spots that you wouldn't be able to see ahead of time, turning it into an unfair bit of trial-and-error until you memorize everything, and even then it's annoying to make jumps to platforms you can't see.
*The boss fight was pretty neat, but it was a bit tiresome with how much it forces you to wait: would like if it was a bit sped-up and not idle around as long as it does.
Again, I can appreciate that the game 'gets good' after a bit, but I would much prefer if the game just started good in the first place! You do you if you want to be a crazy auteur performance artist who isn't afraid of getting an unfair impression from impatient people (who have every right to be impatient), I guess! At least I made it far enough this time, haha!