Thanks a lot dude. Happy you enjoyed the music and writing, and I gotta give another huge shoutout to Violet for the graphics. While I did do some graphical touches like recoloring the NPCs and making a few custom sprites, it was Violet's spritework that made this game possible in the first place.
Encounter rates and grinding are the issues that pop up most commonly. I wish I could have made Reid have Defend instead of Attack for convenience, but I wasn't sure how to do that and there were so many higher priorities during dev time. There would have also been disparity between Reid having Defend in place of his Attack command and Harold learning Defend which ends up in his Special category. A friend of mine outside the RPG Maker community who tested Stuck In The Past also swept the whole thing with the log, although he also overleveled so I wasn't sure if it was the log or his level which was doing the work. The log actually has a +10 attack boost which is just asinine, and it'll definitely get some nerfs. As for the postgame stairs and events, that wasn't at the forefront of my mind since the postgame was essentially done in the last full day or two and I didn't anticipate the player to leave Appold after finishing the bonus challenge.
As I've mentioned before, I do plan to release a final version after the results come in which fixes some of these issues. Encounter rates will definitely be lower, I'll be sure to nerf the log, and I do plan on including a more comprehensive postgame since time limits won't be an issue after the jam. Developing the postgame also means fixing those pesky stairs, so that'll make the definitive version as well. I would absolutely love to make more games, especially now that I'm understanding RPGs a little more and I have a fresh new copy of MV to play around with.