Thank you for the detailed feedback, and I'm sorry you didn't find it engaging enough to continue. A few responses:
- The issue with screenshotting/recording exclusive fullscreen is a Windows issue; I'm not sure why exactly, but I've looked into it before and have seen it occur with many applications, including AAA games. There is however an engine issue at play here, which is that Godot for some reason automatically makes an application running at full native resolution exclusive, not windowed. The workaround to achieve windowed fullscreen is to set the window at 1px smaller - but the problem with that is that on a 16:9 display, this drops integer scaling down to the next lowest level, causing the effectively fullscreen application to run letterboxed and possibly show a pixel of desktop at the bottom. This is maybe less of a concern than it was originally, since I now have integer scaling turned off by default. I can look into adding a windowed option. I've found that pointing OBS to the display device rather than the application allows it to record properly, which is how I captured my own footage.
- I am not sure what you mean by hijacking mouse functionality.
- The lack of things like distinct field icons and attack animations is not homage, but compromise. This is simply due to the limits on my time and artistic skill, though I also view attack animations in general with skepticism because they can easily make combat drag. I can't draw and animate everything that I would like to, let alone draw them well and position them convincingly and visibly (consider a lever or magic mouth on a wall, for instance), so I have focused on what I can get the most mileage out of and leaned on flavor text to help fill in the imagination gaps. This frankly doesn't bother me as a player (even Experience does this), but I recognize that it won't be to everyone's taste.
- The status option in combat shows active effects for all combatants.
- Defense is primarily evasion, but in practice can also reduce damage taken from hits, as crit damage is based on the margin of success of the attack roll. Armor is a straight subtraction from all damage. The help screen gives a rundown of what all the stats do.
- What you say about the slow leveling, tight economy, and high damage from enemies is all intentional, and difficulty tends to be highest when first entering a new dungeon, including the hospital. Sometimes a character does get dogpiled, and I don't really intend to code anything to prevent that. If you get trashed in a bad combat, reloading is entirely legitimate.
- Your party build sounds solid. Aspects have minimum stats, but don't otherwise directly influence them; it sounds like you gave War a 12+ Vigor and a greatsword, which will give them a fairly hardy basic attack. This is true regardless of aspect, though some are harder to raise to 12 Vigor than others (I'm considering loosening the minimum stats). Base stats never increase (AD&D style), but certain substats grow at a rate derived from the base stats. For example, Power increases every level, and the higher your Vigor, the faster it increases. Defense and Accuracy increase at a constant rate. Going from level 2 to level 3 does make a significant difference in the hospital, and fully exploring the first map should almost certainly level everyone up to 3. Character creation states that base stats cannot be changed later, but I didn't make it explicit that they are wholly static, so I can clarify that.
- M. Attack is meant to be weak; originally staves and wands could not attack from the back row at all, and this was added to give those characters an alternative to just defending when not spending MP, which I think "feels" better. Magic weapons aren't make-or-break for skills, though, so a whip or (for a stronger character) bow is also an option for the back row.
- The equipment weight rules are definitely not perfect; this evolved as a kind of compromise to partition equipment in some way without having hard stat or aspect requirements. You're generally meant to keep weight at zero, though the penalties for not doing so might be too high. I'm open to suggestions. There are a couple of unique accessories in the game that reduce weight.
- I did try to give each of the three NPCs their own personality and voice, so I am sorry that that didn't come through. I'll take another look at their dialogue.
- There is an option to flip the targeting controls.
- Support skills are admittedly not as compelling as I'd like. I'm again open to suggestions here.