Thanks for trying it out, and for the compliments.
>You could make the XP progression a little more obvious.
Good idea, I can add some increasing glow or more intense animation with higher tiers. The shop items have colored icons over them indicating a rarity tier, too, but I don't think those are particularly obvious, either. I just took the classic Phantasy Star rarity color scheming, but of course there's no C/B/A rankings here that actually give that info.
>I also felt like the XP progression ground to a halt after the crossbow guys show up
It seems the same way to me when I test it. I think it's because the hollow soldier enemies are too spongy, so all your money drops are covered up by a blob of them.
>The magic circle having infinite range seems a little not right
Interesting observation. I was thinking of keeping its damage lower against enemy HP scaling (right now static bullet shooting enemies don't have any scaling), but giving it an increasing period of stun or slowness so you can use it for better crowd control. I have stuns & knockback implemented, but I think right now the only weapon that does that is the upgraded magic circle (like 1% chance to get from a chest, lol) which pulls enemies to the center.