Hi Kenuda,
Tavern: You can't enter buildings in-game. Talking to NPCs is handled by clicking on their portrait-icons. If you can't get to an NPC via left-click, then that NPC is strictly decorative and has no quests or dialogue for Captain Hale. All the characters that can be interacted with can also be reached via left-click.
Writing: Yeah the writing is a bit wordy in some places. We were afraid there'd be too little of it, so we might've gone overboard a bit. Given the feedback since then, we've figured out the sweet spot is about 2000 words per dialogue. Jeoffrey's crew on the other hand was written early on during production, and their conversation is 35,000+ words. There's options in there to skip ahead though, so you can use those to wrap up the convo much earlier.
Tutorial: Thanks for the suggestion, I'll add that to our to-do list! Maybe some kind of interactive pop-up to explain what each of the icons does.
Inventory: It's sealed until the party gets to Fort Ninevus (which we're working on atm). The early game is basically a visual novel. Then it turns into an RPG later on with equipment, itemization, party management, crafting, and combat.
ESC Menu: We added a specialized icon next to the floppy disk ones in later builds (it's not in the Legacy one yet), that lets you exit the game and return to the main menu. But full inventory access will be granted once we're done implementing the other RPG features, so players will be able to save/load through there.
There's a bunch of other features we plan to add to the game and will be rolled out in gradual updates.
Thanks for the feedback tho, it's much appreciated! :)