Firstly, I want to thank you for playing the game and taking the time to write the long review.
The review has not come across as a roast, even though it is on the negative side it is still valuable and only stated facts that I agree on.
The current update 1.3.X was worked on for approximately 2 months on a 4-year-old game, the longer I try on this game the more I realize it would be much easier to start from scratch then work on something already "solidified".
Now to answer your questions/provide context:
1. I do agree that the intro has lost an opportunity, I do know how to draw but time was the issue. Also, in regard to my art-style it would be best to redraw all the assets, since the game currently is using default/free-assets.
2. Yes, there are many ways. But I never touched on them yet. People change a lot in 4 years, so unlike when I first made this game. I know how the engine works, and how to get what I want. The second half of what you said is very valuable, coming from someone who never experienced the world/story before, the game does move very quickly which ends up leaving for no room for the characters themselves. This can only be fixed by rewriting everything, which I will come back to later.
3. That is a problem, in the original the enemies' hits do so little that phrase would be valid. But in the current, everything was rebalanced and that text-box was unchanged. Having it give off the wrong impression is something that needs to be fixed. The first battle can be lost but it doesn't give a game-over. The tutorial in itself is not very good in its current state.
4. The keyboard part of the game, was mainly because I always played these games with keyboard. And at the time I did not know the engine had default gamepad support, there is nothing in the game that prevents the gamepad from being used but the tutorial was never adjusted. There is nothing in the game yet to cause key-rebinding to break anything, so that would be something to consider adding.
5. Pretty much all the soldiers have the "triple-attack", so it was "pure luck" that the intro one has been using it but the others rarely? So, far there is nothing in the intro battle to keep Eliza from dying off immediately. I'll look into it.
6. The only reason the skill has a chance, was to keep the items useful. I had other priorities to worry about than reworking the cure-skill, but it is a useless-skill since no player I know of has ever used it.
7. Yes, that was mentioned before. For whatever reason, only Taunt is insta-cast. It would be because of the characters AGI that heal seemed to be insta-cast, which that is something that isn't yet rebalanced properly in the current game.
8. Magic doesn't do fixed damage; the descriptions just haven't been reworded to make it clear. Which is a problem on my side. It's just the base damage, and Magic-Attack is added to the formula.
9. Leveling is something I couldn't rebalance safely. To change how quickly players level up, would break the fragile balance of the entire game. So, it is something I didn't want to touch when I had so little time. But I do agree that it is just too overpowered, and happens too often.
10. I do find the fire-damage interesting, throughout the development of the game. Ryoma always ended up as the one who tanks damage, but outputs the most. This is a problem with class/character balancing.
11. Enemy detection is very much broken. I do have a better method, but I haven't been able to implement it yet.
12. That text-box was added due to poor level-design. In the old game testers had trouble finding the passage, and that was "the fix". And this was a big issue that remained. Having something to stop movement of enemies during text was mentioned before, but also. Something beyond my skill-set of the time and was not implemented.
13. Eliza's solo battle is a favorite with others as well, I'm glad it was enjoyable. But the issue that Ryoma isn't there to carry the team, kept the battle from being the best it could be. An issue with enemy/class balancing.
14. Blacking out the screen was indeed used too often. If I were to have made the game much more recently, cutscenes would have been much more fleshed out. But sadly, with the time constraint of this jam, I didn't want to use too much time with cutscenes that "aren't broken."
15. So far, the games level design is: Run, fight, trigger-cutscene: Which is not at all fun, if the story or combat isn't good enough to make up. I've tried to rebuild the worst of the interactions, but there are just too many to fix in 2 months.
edit: Yes, I just realized the mistake with the shields.
I hope my reply was informative/useful?
Thank you again for playing the game and writing out the review. It was thought-provoking and very informative.
I'm leaning much closer to just starting from scratch, I've been wanting to remake the game anyway, and the changes I want to do will be too big for a simple update.