Full disclosure I didn't get that far in the demo. I somehow softlocked myself after the rat boss fight in the sewers. I exited through the door on the left that you need to use the bubble to get to and then immediately went back because I thought I was about to get lost. The door teleported me back to the rat boss fight room but my character was nowhere to be seen. Only thing I could do was move the camera.
Anyways the pixel art and animations are excellent. I also really dig the music, at the very least I think you have this game's general aesthetics already on lock.
I'm going to echo what blorbdev mentioned about the character controls though. The player can feel sluggish to move around. First thing I noticed during boss fights is how much lag turning around has. I think you should make it possible to immediately attack out of the turning animation so it can be comfortably used for spacing out enemies. I also wish rolling was a bit faster. It feels like it's easy to get locked into rolling in the same direction (i.e. if I try to roll -> turn around -> roll too quickly I just roll twice in the same direction).
The foot step sounds are obnoxiously fast and loud. They don't match the pace of the character's walk animation.
A very minor thing but it should probably be possible to heal at the save spot without saving the game. In a lot of rpgs just interacting with the save spot is usually enough to fully restore health. I also ran into the issue where reloading a save wouldn't put me at full health, almost as if the game is coded to save before restoring the player's health.
Could be the scrub in me talking but I don't think any of bosses I fought telegraph their attacks too well. The ranged attacks in the rat boss especially come out really quickly, like the one where he punches down and the fist comes out from below twice in quick succession.
There's a few instances where I couldn't tell what's part of the background or not. I walked straight into some sewer sludge coming out of a pipe because I thought it was a background detail.
A very minor nitpick but I personally think it would be nicer if the staircases in picrel were implemented more like ramps so the player can walk directly to the doors without having to jump.
Pretty cool to finally try this game after seeing it posted so often in the threads. I'll be sure give it another try next time you submit.