Thank you for taking the time to play my game and to leave a comment.
I was hoping to learn to use the 2D animation rigging to animate the movement and attacks, but I just wasn't fast enough to program the things that I needed.
Funnily enough, the defense action cost was initially higher than some attacks during early development. The defense actions requiring less energy than attacks was decided midway as I developed my initial concept and created more actions more for certain types of actions beating other actions. The rationale was that the lower defense cost would would allow a character to wait out an opponent that spams low-cost, but fast offensive moves, but would be open to receiving extra damage if they tried to defend against more damaging attacks. Unfortunately, this interaction still needs better opponent logic to be programmed. I will need to think over energy costs when I have a more complete actions list.