Thank you for the feedback. I agree with everything.
I decided I wanted an old-school synthesized voice, but voices were one of last things to go in. When I realized you couldn't understand them with the synthesizer I was using, I just tried to alter the dialogue as much as I could to make it work with the voice (I ended up making the dialog have nothing to do with Fatal Frame's actual plot as a result), but alas it's still not all understandable. Subtitles were considered and have a (admittedly bad) reason I didn't use them - they wouldn't work with the tiny resolution.
Obviously there's a readability issue in general, largely a result of the lighting. I don't regret doing lighting - out of everything it's the thing that in my mind most sets my game apart from other 1D experiences out there, at least that I've seen. But I could've done that better. I think making the key actually emit light instead of just blinking a lighter color, which is dulled by the shadows, would have helped a lot.