As someone who suffers telling their left from their right, (and spent a month making animations for character sprites where “left” and “right” are relative to the character, not the screen,) the ““combat”” for a lack of a better word mechanic definitely provided a lot of challenge for me, especially for the chef and captain’s stricter time limits.
Perhaps after beating the game, you should unlock a gallery to be able to admire the people (especially the Guard) without having to focus on the timed gameplay.