You found a clever way to tell a story, it works really well.
The music and sound design is pretty good, you could slightly offset the pitch of the slash to add more variations.
Now the combat:
I don't see why I would want to block 75% of the damage, I don't know how much damage the enemy will do and I don't know how much health I have. If you vary the amount of damage from attack to attack, but you clearly indicate its intention it would give me an incentive to use the defense.
To chose which attack I want to lend I think that I need to know the enemy's health point or at least I think that I want to know the impact my attack might have.
I did not find the stats impactful enough. I would have loved to play the game without having all my skills (attack & defense) and unlock them based on my stats or make them synergize with some attribute. For example an attacks that deals X * dexterity. This would even give a stronger incentive to use items at the right time.
Congrats I had fun playing through the whole game.