Whelp I played your game through. Honestly I'm terrible with every game and skip tutorials so did the same on this game, and skipped the story (if the text appeared faster I may of read it) :P, got the 'true ending'.
Realized after you've got auto-saves that's pretty cool, although I don't know how you've got that sorted looks like alphabetically which puts like 10 before 2 and 11 after 10. (and it's useful for seeing the exact stats on my assistants!)
I still don't quite get the Assistant creation like I tried focusing on 2 main elements it got me a guy with 1 atk 1 spirit and 22 speed, it got 1 shotted :P. tried having alot of all the elements I did like a 17 18 8 9 and got a 0 1 2 minion which got 1 shotted lol. My strongest minion was probably one of my lava assistants it had 5 attack 4 speed 8 spirit, that type was just superior to the other ones I got. It has range, was hitting for 50 with an AoE, was slow enough to stay behind elementals, and 1 shotted practically anything. Whereas the mantis would run ahead and get destroyed, or be unable to attack because it was melee until elementals fell, mist/fog horses were decent, but would run too fast getting themselves destroyed. I only got 1 elephant guy he died instantly since he had 1 spirit lol. Looking at the GDD afterward makes it seem like my guys should've had better stats idk, didn't really matter either.
I was complaining to myself about the crystal management though I wish I could see more of them at the same time since I had so many stockpiled but can only see 5 at once. A way to see your assistants before heading out would be nice too.
I can tell a lot of work was put into this and the fact I played it through shows I enjoyed it well enough! All my criticisms are meant to be constructive! So good job, forcing me to play this when I was intending to hop on BG3 lol. Man though is that GDD detailed.