Thanks for giving it a thorough play through! And sorry for the late reply, I had apparently forgotten to hit "Post".
I'm not sure about your suggestion to add a hint, though... The theme of the jam was "beyond expectations", and this was my way of doing that. A priori explaining to the player what is the unexpected part seemed contradictory to the theme. The irony is that, (as you have experienced first hand lol) although people did not expect it, most of the players filled in the disbelief by assuming that this is a continuation. Kind of a bummer since the creation of the recap took a week in all. Ah well, with each one you learn.
The battle system is admittedly weak. The initial version was quite unforgiving so I had decided to dumb it down to avoid the situation of players getting frustrated and quitting the game half-way.
In any case, thanks for playing! Much appreciated.