Fun concept, cute art - but forced way too many instances of having to save scum or reset to prior saves, or start over entirely (Hat Mansion especially - just softlocks the player into bad end and you'd better hope you can figure out a good autosave to roll back to).
I've had several false starts that require a hard reset - followers are insanely expensive at the start, especially since they are "disposable" and likely to lose some after 1 battle. Even with hiring out all available followers, you are still out-numbered and under-leveled for beginning battles on the map; and no point in even trying to level them since they will eventually leave. But there's no other way to gain exp - so you're basically throwing away 300~400 gold for one or two battles. (that's if you win; a loss basically requires a reset as then you're broke or have to go fishing by yourself repeatedly many times to afford to try it again.)
It's odd that some combat abilities require a "Move" tile left, and others dont - but the info card for abilities don't describe that. Most other SRPG allow "move" + "action" as separate objects. If the system here is going to be restricting actions based on if you moved 3 steps or not, each move info card needs to specify "consumes 1 move" or "consumes 2 moves".
Is there just some specific questline you are "supposed" to follow at the start to get a good leg up to overcome starting difficulty; and I've just walked every other path instead?
Fawn girl seems to send you too far away for a starting quest; Mermaids want to siege a fortress - seems like a Bad Idea at Lvl 2. Hat Mansion %#!@%$ - neat concept, but after fully exploring and basically getting "haha softlock or bad end - load prior save" I'm not excited to go through it again. Cat alley in town = another "reload a prior save" instance due to how much you lose (funny and makes sense at least though :) .
I want to like this game, and it has potential; but after a few hours of basically wasted time for no meaningful progress , I also want to walk away entirely.