Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it, and found the central gimmick to reach the true-end interesting.
You are correct about the fighting, it's not required, and in fact I believe you have to skip fighting on the map to reach the good ending. Fighting is more for the trial-and-error period where you are learning what shops and locations have which items. Admittedly, I had originally planned to do more with the fighting, and maybe even have Camilla show up on the map as an "enemy" but I ran out of time and had to simplify it quite a bit to hit the deadline.