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Are we playing the same game? I did not understand a single thing you just said.
As far as I can gather, the entire game as far as progression is quests and combat. If there's anything else that can be done, I haven't found it. So perhaps the issue is not that I can't play the game, but that I don't even know what genre of game this is...
Strive is basically a monster-girl slave harem power fantasy.
The biggest challenge for most players is the lack of gold at the start of the game to buy proper armor, weapons, and bandages for combat. The game gives you 250 gold in story mode but a bit less than 1000 gold is needed for equipment for both the player character and the starting slave, so players have created guides identifying the fastest ways to get that money so that the player can get to playing the rest of the game how they want.
The first guild quest exploit (which relies on default sex ratios) is buying a cheap(less than 100 gold) female slave from the slave guild to complete the quest which provides 250 gold as a reward. This provides enough money to buy the main character good weapon and armor, which can be used to free victims from bandits for rewards of gold and equipment. Without the exploit, the player can only afford good armor and the default weapon. Bandages are used to heal up after battle. When you get enough money to buy good equipment for the start slave, then you can use them to actually defeat enemies rather than relying on them running away. This isn't a required way to play, but it is the fastest way to get the game started.
I would absolutely not in a million years ever consider buying equipment at the start of a money management game before I have earned any money. But who knows, maybe I unknowingly play most games on hard mode, and that just isn't viable in this game.
Although now I'm thinking perhaps it actually isn't a money management game, but just an RPG, and you just start out a small amount money, like you do in money management games...?
I wouldn't consider Strive a money management game, simply because that is the weakest part of the game. For the beginning, maybe the first hour or two, money is critical and lacking; the player starts with a slave with no stats to make money from jobs and combat is by far the best way of getting money and stats. After you reach mid-game, maybe after 4 to 6 hours, money becomes easier to get from both combat and jobs with it becoming entirely trivial after you catch or buy multiple slaves.
It probably does better as an RPG, but honestly the difficulty follows a similar difficulty curve as the money management. So that works as long as you aren't expecting a challenge outside of early game.
I'm also still confused by the concept of a power fantasy management game or a power fantasy RPG.
I'm really starting to get the impression I have just never in my life played a game of this genre and therefore have no idea what the goal is, and it just feels badly made because I'm trying to compare it to genres I have played, and it's both all and none of those...
I'd say that you are not at all wrong with that description. I've heard it described as a jack of many trades but master of none in terms of game genre. It's a mashup of several genre, so it can be better to describe the game in terms of it's core appeal rather than all the little additional game mechanics.
The simple matter is that the game is badly made(edit: Mav was just starting to learn to program when he made it) though it has a strange intrigue to it that make people want much more from it. It's by no means the worst game or unplayable, but it was poorly conceived at the start, evolved many times to suit user requests, and did not end on a overall strong point (many systems were never finished or fleshed out). Some of the disjoint quality of parts of the game comes from the evolution process, and some of it comes from me choosing limited sections of the game to polish up.
