Have to say if the enemies stopping was intended then it's a good way out of trying to do work out a nav system. I just know I would spend like 60% of my time just trying to do something like that when I can't.
And yeah about the puzzle game type aesthetic, while it may have been better as a puzzler (potentially who knows how it would have turned out) I don't think it was bad like it was still quite fun. And anyway you probably didn't have time to playlets the best way to work the system to see if play former or puzzler was better.