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Ok. Thank you for giving me a detailed analysis of the game and yes. It is quite a bit to unpack so I'll cover your points beat by beat.

• I didn't get a lot of the story references to last year's jam either due to my poor memory or it was related to games I hadn't played, so trying to digest each wall of text was... let's say I appreciated the quality of the writing more than the quantity or details. Sometimes it felt like "jargon soup" during the expository scenes, which is unfortunate as the depth of world-building is impressive on the one hand but it pulls the audience out of the experience/ruins immersion to have so many WTF-is-happening moments. 

I will attest that due to the limited time I had, I wasn't able to truncate a lot of the more less annoying scenes and I started this project a few days late into the jam.  I wanted to have less things added into it (since originally there was a lot more to go through) and truncate all the fanservice as much but it wouldn't have much of the punch I want. And I'll be honest its also very difficult to manage all the references within the span of time that I had without it dragging along. There was originally going to be more characters and scenarios but I had to cut it due to time constraints and my laptop having a performance issue. So there's that. Excuses I know but its a factor to the end product.

• Music choices were good, seems like most SFX were RTP which is fine.

Yeah, I don't have the luxury of using more original music. I'm no music maestro. Also RTP is the encompassing unwritten theme of Harold overall so I don't want to just throw away the RTP in its fullest.

• I kinda wish you weren't encouraged to pick a single team and double down on it. The relationship mechanic and how it impacted stats/skills was satisfying but it also meant I ignored characters for the whole playthrough. And, while I enjoyed the entire game, it was definitely too lengthy to do a second run just to see what other sidequests were there. 

See, here's the thing. I originally was going to have a party system where you can switch party members in combat. But when I tested it, the game broke on me multiple times when doing certain actions and I wouldn't want anymore bugs for the player. I tried fixing this for days but couldn't get it to work. So unfortunately it ended up the way it did. Visustella Party System doesn't allow disable and enabling on the offset so I can't exactly make a fix for it. And when I try, it falls apart. But trust me, I definitely understand. I would love to make it so that everyone gets a spotlight so that the whole thing can be done in 1 playthrough. But again, time. And a part of me really wants the game to be more replayable but I suppose that kinda falls flat for a jam game huh. 

•  I would have liked to see dialog branches or something interactive during story scenes; while the menu navigation was well done, structurally there wasn't much "gameplay" outside of battles and menuing.

If I added more stuff, it would pad the game more than it already is. I already decided to just keep it simple so that players weren't given too many options to do gameplay wise. Puzzles will drag the game further. Exploration run the risk of it being boring. And other aspects will just pad the game without meaning for me. So I just had to focus on one thing and run with it. It may dampen the gameplay variety but its what I want to focus on for this project.

• Speaking of battles, I think 1-2 waves of jobbers could have been trimmed per "area". I get their utility as a chance to experiment with character skills and maybe drain some resources, but there came a point where I just started AoE-ing them down to get it over with.

Now this aspect I will put a middle ground spin on it. I was given the same feedback before and decided to keep it. I think if there's anything I can do to mitigate this it would be to make the random harold mook battles more controllable and optional. Maybe have a Harold Ticket to just skip the random battles or something. Well, something to learn and add next time I have something of this nature being made.

• The fights vs. enemy contestants were much more mechanically interesting though it felt like giving them all Stimulants was kind of an artificial way of padding the fights out. Surprisingly the area bosses felt much easier than the 3-v-3 battles, and I usually cleared these in just a few rounds even with the auto-revive or other shenanigans. It seemed like each one had a cool gimmick at least.

I see you played Reid mode. Priscilla mode removes this stimulant issue. Though its true that the revive padding is annoying. Though battles would end waaaayyyy too quickly at times if I don't do this. Granted, there might be alternate solution like adding more mitigation gimmicks but Harotaur can cancel those way too easily. This is a balancing issue I can't exactly solve with the limited time that I have. So I apologize for that.

• The difficulty spike after the 3 main areas was curious. I had done all of the side dialog and was purchasing items like a madman so it didn't seem too daunting, but Buffet Harold in particular felt at times like his damage mitigation was unfair. (I also suspect, I should have remembered to hover my mouse over him to see what effects were modifying damage, but I forgot about that plugin until the following battle.) There might have actually been too many mechanics to keep track of. Like, it's great to see this level of complexity with a close-to-default battle system, and some of the synergies were just fantastic (Minotaur Harold's design was brilliant in particular), but there were also some things that felt like they should have interacted with one another that didn't; perhaps having a more uniform design with fewer unique gimmicks might have helped there.

I'll admit the complexity may be daunting to even RPG battle players who are adjusted to the JRPG formula. I tend to play more brain stimulating games so often times I got overzealous with adding skills and conditionals that I pretty much went overboard with the gimmicks at times. I would streamline things but this is an issue of scoping on my end. So yeah. But hey, I joined the Harold Jams to make a more experimental games as opposed to winning so there's that. And now I learned a bit from your feedback.

• Side note, it doesn't look like any restorative items remove the DoT stacks from Dark spark type moves, even though the descriptors imply they should.

If you are referring to Dreadbane, then they can't be removed actually. Some DoT stacks can't be removed until the end of the battle (it even persists post KO). If there is a descriptor that doesn't match the description, I might have to fix that. It is an alternate strategy to those who wanted to use DoT strategy than the brute force (even tho a lot of harold resist certain DoTs).

• Final few fights were tricky, epic, and over-the-top. Ending was solid, and despite being out of the loop in many ways I found the wrap-up fulfilling. All in all, the character interactions were super well done once they really got underway.

I'm glad that despite the fact that you're lost on the context, the ending was executed well in your eyes. I do try to make the characters the focus of this project. Granted, I am a bit overambitious with this but hey, experimentation than victory for me.

• Lastly, I wish I could award bonus points for this being such a love letter to Haroldness itself and a celebration of the community at large.

Ahaha.. I got the Harold Ascendant Award last year. I don't think I want to get greedy getting another bonus points this time too. But regardless, thank you for playing the game and giving me your extensive thoughts. I appreciate your feedback and your analysis of the game. And with such detail too since I wanted to hear your thoughts after you made a project I enjoyed as well.