Hi Barako, thanks as always for your review.
Difficulty is a tricky thing to tune. I got a third party to playtest it before release and they reached the goblin boss within 15 minutes and beat him after a couple of attempts. The main feedback I received from the playtester was the recovery items from pots weren't potent enough to offset the damage taken while killing enemies, so I raised the recovery amount, but left everything else as is.
Regarding the low range of the dagger and the difficulty fighting enemies immune to knockback like the sand slimes, that was intentional - there are two more weapons found in the next area after the goblin boss: A Spear with more than twice the range but a longer recovery after striking and a Club that always adds knockback but can't be thrust, requiring good swing timing.
The goblin boss is sort of the end of the "introduction" area, combining behaviors from earlier enemies. He has the same blind spot as the arrow goblins where the player can position to avoid the arrows while still striking the enemy. He also retreats each time the player character swings. He's designed to be challenging if you panic and start running in circles but easy if you keep your nerve and control the encounter with careful movement. You almost had him!
There's a flowchart of the entire game's maps in the Omake folder.
I might reuse this action system for future jams. I think it has a lot of remaining potential. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it.