Some of it was sadly due to RPGMaker limitations, like the information items still having to be used on a "blank" character. We didn't want to include any scripts to fully capture that spirit of making a game in 3 days, so a bunch of compromises had to be made there.
Edit: Also, thanks a lot for the kind words! I felt the need to address the game's limitation there, and forgot to respond to the rest of the post. Oops.