itch.io

Here is a link to the VOD.

I will say, one of the things I wanted to make sure of when I played this game was I kept in mind the intended limitations of the game. I'm a proponent that old hardware doesn't mean bad game, and that games  designed today on retro hardware should still meet with today's standards. When in doubt on what the real problem is, this is a good question to ask yourself: is this to modern gaming standards and sensibilities? If not, why? Once you know why, ask if that reason why is intentional on your part? If it is, ok. You're trying to reflect an aspect of older gaming. In that situation, you should implement a tool that is designed to help people deal with it but make its use optional. A map in this scenario would work.

As for combat, you can save that combat so long as you put it to good use. So let's change a few things.

First, we need a reason to participate in combat and not just run. The answer is to make it that killing enemies gives something to the player. What could that be? Up to you if you want to add an RPG leveling system or an item drop system or something else. However, whatever the case may be you need to ensure that the value for victory is greater than the cost of fighting. You want people to engage in fights.

Of course, you can't make rewards way too strong or it'll break things quickly. The level of reward depends on how long a fight takes, so an easy way to ensure you don't give an OP reward is to make sure fights are shorter. This just involves changing some numbers and making it that enemies have less HP or you deal more damage to enemies. Not too hard to fix either way.

These two things alone will fix the "why fight" problem.