This was a very fascinating experience that left me with mixed emotions. Mostly good, but definitely mixed.
The presentation, writing (minus one grammatical error towards the beginning), and social commentary were impeccable, and I found myself constantly engaged by the humor and wit. The mapping was basic but effective, with a completely custom tile set to complement the custom characters, battlers, and backgrounds - all of which were stylistically sound and well executed, although I think the battle graphics didn't quite mesh with the map scenes. I only found one mapping error where you can walk through the side of the mountain (directly before the area transition), while everything else was well-constructed.
I initially didn't like not being able to access some kind of menu outside of save points, but it's completely forgivable since there's no inventory, skill progression, etc. The custom menus, fonts, and other UI elements looked fantastic. Had I not known beforehand that this was an RM game, I would have been 50/50 at best to guess which engine it was made it. Technically speaking, super impressive.
The save points were frequent enough, and healing in between fights was welcome considering that each encounter was meant to be a self-contained challenge rather than part of a long marathon. E.G. it's not Dragon-Quest, resource-drain-style combat. I'm not a big fan of that approach except for bosses, but that's purely subjective and I got used to it.
The $ spending puzzle was great - at least the first couple times; I think it should have had one or maybe even two fewer rounds. (once you got the pattern it was just a lot of spamming Confirm anyways). That said, I appreciated how the puzzle fit thematically into the environment, and it was one of many great moments in that sequence. The PIN thing seemed weird to me, as unless I skipped some clues there was no way to realistically guess it (I mean brute force I guess?) However it was a good sequence regardless, and I would just suggest dealing with the employees should just be the mandatory solution.
Unfortunately my main fault with this game - one of the features I was most looking forward to, looking at the previews - was the battle system itself. There were some great ideas that faltered on execution, and it kind of dragged down the pacing and fun of the game.
The weakness system was clever, but it got repetitive very quickly monsters had way too much health in my opinion. Additionally, some of the enemy weaknesses were intuitive while others felt completely out of left field, which made some of the later encounters with only a single weakness frustrating (imagine using all 8 skill types until you finally get the right one - that's 80 AP, so you gotta do at least 3 Attacks per character to figure out how to proceed.) I also found it odd that a few enemies required counter strategies because they Resisted everything and had super high Defense, but there was no synergy between taunts and counters as they both lasted 1 turn / 1 attack. Waiting for RNG so those Shield monsters would trigger the counter felt like a time sink.
The stars added an interesting element, but I felt like there was untapped potential there as no skills cost 3 stars and the 1-star abilities were a bit underwhelming; generally you just built up to 2, used Charge / Focus, and won the next turn.
I did like that the "taunt and shield" strategy that worked great for the first boss wasn't reliable on the second boss unless you took down the minions first; that was a super neat way of re-using a fight mechanic but making it different enough to feel fresh. The bosses were definitely interesting to figure out, and each one "got" me on the first try. So in terms of challenge in those fights, it felt about perfect to me.
The field encounters were a bit less satisfying as that's where some of the odd balance stuff really came up. I would have liked to see Guard award more AP, mitigate more damage, or both, as it wasn't really useful except in corner cases where you needed exactly 5 AP and maybe the incidental defense was a bonus. The Stances also made a pretty inconsequential difference, and I think there might have even been an issue with how they were implemented as the damage from some enemies seemed to go up in Defensive stance (unless it was super bad RNG).
One last note on combat, there really didn't seem to be a reason to give the female character an Attack skill as there wasn't a single enemy in the game which it dealt more than 1 damage to (this mostly bothered me because Attack, unlike most of the battle commands, didn't have a click-to-confirm, which caused more than a few input errors as I was learning the system). Though it did create a tradeoff of sorts since you weren't guarding, since defensive tactics were generally discouraged it was almost always better to gain 15 AP and take full damage instead of gaining 5 AP and taking 75% damage (if you think about it that's 225% total damage received to gain the same AP over 3 turns, which isn't generally favorable).
Note, I DO appreciate trying to make Guard interesting, it just wasn't on the mark IMO.
Overall this game made me think more than almost any other entry from this jam, and I have to give credit for the complexity and ambition demonstrated here. You took some risks, and a lot of them paid off while other systems just needed a bit more time to tune/refine in my view. This game absolutely has tons of potential to develop further!
So, great job despite the wall of text above (sorry!) I hope the detailed account of what worked and didn't (for me) is helpful in moving the project forward.