This is not the only game that does it so I am not just picking on this game however, this game's death penalty is bit steep. But what is the purpose of death penalty? You are already penalized by dying why add more penalties in addition to that? Just to create a timesink?

This game in particular penalizes you in multiple ways when you die. The first being the reduction in health and the weakness status. Second the weakness status lasts for three minutes. Third your skills take longer to execute. Fourth you are teleported to the last Crystal. Finally after all of this, you have to wait for your health to regenerate after the weakness status wears off. Thats quite a lot of penalties for dying. Doing nothing for three minutes seems rather counter productive for a game. Again, this is not the only game that is guilty of this.