Finally finished a whole game!
Overall, it was unique, fresh, dangerous, and most importantly fun! It's a hard start when you don't know exactly what to expect, but once you hit the 2nd or 3rd dungeon, you'll be in the sweet spot of knowing what to bring and when to take downtime because you really don't want to lose your emotional support teddy bear (hehe).
I think this game really hits on nearly everything when it comes to emulating the taste of grit without having to commit to something as gritty as Band of Blades! The only thing that I just found grating, personally was the pacing. The 54 deck of cards is a good choice for this kind of thing but for me I'd often come to the same situation:
"Oh, my third 4 in a row, well time to roll 3d6"
When I started to get the same rooms over and over, it just felt a little sloggish.
To help with the pacing a little, I just removed two suites of number cards and kept all the facecards. I figured that while I couldn't imagine 4 different ways of evading a guy with a knife, I could always think of at least 2! This change really helped enhance the feeling of making progress without moving so quickly that everything was a pushover. In the end, my teddy bear made the ultimate sacrifice in killing Emperor Titan Kyne and saving everyone!. I would definitely recommend this to a newcomer of rpgs as is or modified!