Cool concept! My main two criticisms are how limited gold is early on and the fact that, at least from what I got in my playthroughs, upgrades and items lean towards defense over offense, which lead to battles consisting of chipping away at opponents that can do little or nothing to stop you. A particularly egregious case was against two reptilians who couldn't damage me due to defense items, only inflict confusion. So I sat there doing one or two damage every other turn or so for about 10 minutes...