Hey, thanks so much for trying it out and for the honest feedback! ♥
Yeah, I'm trying to realise my idea right now, and that's why I went with AI art - it's the only way I could actually get this thing made solo. But I still tried to push it as much as possible to make it feel atmospheric, to get it as close to how I see the game in my head as I could. Glad some of that came through for you.
About the abyss - yeah, it's quite a hardcore game, the combat doesn't really hold your hand. The enemy actually does tell you where it's about to hit: under the enemy you'll see their intent (like "Head" or "Body"), and on the doll figures the targeted hit zones are highlighted too - you just need to block that same zone on your side. One thing worth knowing: you need enough Perception to read intents on tougher enemies - low Perception means you'll see "???" instead of the actual zone, so it's a stat worth investing in. I can totally see how that wasn't obvious on a first fight though, so I just added some hover tooltips to make the hidden intents clearer, and I'll keep working on making that connection more readable for new players.
Thanks again for giving it a chance, really appreciate it!