Hey Nate, thanks for playing and for the great feedback! Sorry a lot of the design elements were unclear and stress inducing.
Regarding the story, unfortunately it's all at the beginning and end. You can probably figure out the point in the development cycle where we realized that A) there wasn't time for more character scenes and B) the game was already too long for more of them anyways.
Tutorials were absolutely a weakness of the game as I had to assemble them hastily on the last day along with the entire endgame, basically.
I should've left Autosave on in hindsight. I though "save everywhere" was good enough, but that was probably a poor assumption to make.
Skill masteries are very subtle and only add a few extra points of damage to lower-tier skills. The effect is more pronounced on State-granting skills (or should be anyways) as well as the higher EP skills. Might have been too subtle especially in the jam format where you almost never get past skill level 3. Lessons learned.
I'm glad the consensus is that this system would be better for a long-form game since as you have discovered by now, evaluating that option was the point of making this prototype.
Much appreciated input as always.
--moogle