There IS a save button, but yeah, I'm gonna have to agree with you. You'd really only play this game to specifically do just that, because otherwise, why play it? It's repetitive, tedious, enemies are way too powerful, especially mid to late game, and even early game they are pretty bad, if you don't prioritize speed over anything else, you're probably not going to get very far in the game, and even then, being fast enough means nothing if you can't lower the opponent's HP faster than they can to you.
Diminishing returns of XP means that you will have to grind particular enemies for quite a long time if you want to frequently use items in battles (Pretty much mandatory for most, if not all of them), which is just... why? Why have a system akin to Dark Souls with using XP for both buying items and leveling up? Just make a separate currency that enemies drop upon defeat, or that you can find in the overworld.
The writing, though, IS GREAT. Like, I'm not kidding, it's quite good, as well as the art and the overall idea of it, but the fact that it is hidden beneath a frustrating unbalanced veneer of a game boggles my mind. I honestly feel like this would've been better off as a choose your own adventure story from the nineties or something, rather than whatever this game is.