I'm glad to hear it was useful to you, let me expand and explain those areas where there was some confusion, and reveal the incredible secrets of the hidden 3 :)
Balance can absolutely be a pain, usually game devs pick a base-line character or deck to use as their balance metric, in Slay The Spire for example the Ironclad is what everything in the game is balanced around, potential power increase from relics and upgrades informs the developer how much they should increase the challenge of enemies.
Currently Cardplay's campaign has 1 character, a basic enemy, and 3 challengers which get stronger as you progress which is fine, lets not try to expand too quickly, but it does mean that you can easily balance card combat in a vacuum, right now i do think it's too front-loaded with our hero having 1 and 2 cost attacks and blocks with 1 lust card, and as i said earlier requiring the entire campaign to get 1 card pack.
The base enemy has buffs, 0 cost attacks, and heals, he can do 20 damage easily in a round while the player is limited without cards, i would recommend giving the player a few starting cards to make a deck with so they aren't just blasted, maybe a starting card pack to open.
1. Completely agree, i think this will help a lot.
2. I've no doubt, a buff counter would be much appreciated yes please.
3. I forgot to re-order numbers after removing a personal complaint that i felt was unreasonable(Not being able to see enemy card intent makes it a guessing game, but depending on your personal vision as a developer this could have been intentional, and should not really count as neutral constructive criticism.)
4. Bit of a misunderstanding here, what i'm saying is that while you have the enemy deck open so that you can read what a card did(their buffs for example), the button to close the enemy deck is about 60% covered up by the lust counter, Esc doesn't close it, i was just sort of trapped in the enemy deck screen clicking around till i spotted it in the top right which i must have glazed over on first looking.
5. A matter of personal taste i think, some people expect visible enemy intent, other people like to guess, i do think it plays much too slowly though so i'm glad it'll be sped up.
6. Whenever i get a gallery image by winning or losing i also lose 20 Moanika, it both says so in pink text beneath the picture and i confirmed it in the shop that i was losing moanika, which feels like i'm being taxed for my reward.
Even worse is i would get the same gallery image as a prior loss and still lose 20 Moanika, i thought that this meant gallery images just cost Moanika, but it sounds like i was just getting the "Player loses Moanika on loss" whether i won a combat or lost. Maybe because i had low hp and bleed on some of my wins? I'm actually not sure what caused it if it's not intended for me to lose money on gallery image pickups.
I completely agree, fights are a bit tough, but it's really RNG that punishes, it's why i started just rushing damage so i could go 1 for 1 with the enemy until they get their bugged out buff.
Scaling enemy decks does sound good, my main complaint on the decks and balance other than bugs really was just that players start with nothing cool and card packs take too long to purchase when running the campaign, the black market arena definitely pays better though.
True, lust does do a bit of direct damage, i forgot to say that, my bad, it does still feel underwhelming, and i tend to just play it and then defense cards which means unless i've already had the enemy play their bugged buff card i'm just passing the turn and increasing the odds they will get their turbo buff before i can dps them into a death range, which may have soured my opinion of them.
Sounds like a plan, i just don't see the point in making a game an adult experience if it's such a small part of the game, it reduces your audience a lot for what is currently a very small part of the content and mechanics.
I like that, reminds me of Saria Reclaimed before it went under, you actually may want to check that out if that's the direction you're planning to go, a lot of people really enjoyed the game before the dev dropped it and niche wise i can't think of many games which you'd be directly competing with, though i would caution against scope creep, if you do plan to go that direction i would recommend completing the systems you want to use in this game and keeping the scope small so you can implement your refined combat systems into the larger game project later, having a complete game under your belt in your portfolio would definitely help convince prospective patrons that you mean business.
While i generally prefer 2D projects (3D often causes for me an uncanny valley perception issue) i am curious what you have cooking there, and best of luck on it as well :)