Thank you for taking the time to play Eclipse War and leave a detailed review!
The current plan is for character portraits to get replaced with an actual artist eventually, though I'd prefer to do that when the project is much further along. I do have a soft spot for "bad in a charming way" things myself and I definitely was trying to channel some higurashi sprite energy into my demo but I'd ideally like to phase that out for the full game. I've already decided that if I opt to not hire an artist and keep going with my own art the full game is going to be free.
The UI navigation seemed to be the biggest issue people are having so it's my #1 action item going forward.
Sorry to hear you encountered technical issues. I had discovered that bug myself but could not for the life of me reproduce it no matter what I tried so I figured it must be so rare that nobody will ever encounter it. Knowing that somebody has encountered it in the wild definitely bumps it up on the priority list.