All in all pretty damn good.
The last Boss was certainly challenging.
I have a bunch of nitpicks though:
I didn't really stand a chance against the Boss until I reached level 4. I tried to strategize, but the margin of RNG was too wide and unpredictable to have any reliable strategy until Level 4 stats.
And while a high encounter rate can be annoying when you're trying to explore, I found it a bit low when I was trying to grind up for the final Boss.
The main enemies were too weak for me to ever use the Special. I wasn't ever clear if the Special was the attack I equipped at the boxes, or a separate thing.
An idea is to either have it charged at the start of the fight, or maybe have blocking progress the timer. Like, you're still taking a little bit of damage, and certainly not regaining HP like with heal, but you're at least getting a bit closer to the Special Attack.
I have to admit, that while I was doing well against the Boss when I finally beat them, they actually glitched out when they went into critical mode. They never attacked from that point onward, and the sprite started edging towards the left. It got about 3/4s of the way towards the player sprite by the time I beat them. (For a while I wasn't sure if this was intentional or not. Like a weird asymmetrical thing that was breaking the conventions of combat.)
Gameplay aside, the concept was good. I think it needed some more references to the players NPC status to really drive it home though. Like maybe an incompetent and arrogant Hero to play off against.
Though obviously you can only do so much in the time frame. But the fact I could find these niggles shows what a good shake you had at making a deep system.
Great entry!