Thank you for taking the time to play and share your excellent and overly generous feedback. I'm really pleased to hear that at least the thematic elements of the game have landed without offence, which is kind of a miracle.
I think you've really hit on the crux of the problem with the whole tutorial and systems design; there probably needs to be more of it for the player to get a complete understanding, but no player actually wants more of it. I certainly left myself stuck between a rock and a hard place, and there's some real learnings here for future games that have more than one mechanic!
No the balance is absolute dogshit and you're most welcome to call it out. In general it is a nightmare to balance systems when they start to interact with one another, but that shouldn't be an excuse, because I made the decision to add that complexity. It does lead to a situation where you either get thrashed from the start, or roll over everything. But it always leads to some waiting around for the end which is never good.
I'm quite pleased that you didn't find my programmer art offensive to look at! I am no artisté, and usually stick to 3D games as that's where I'm most comfy, but I thought I'd screw around with some pixel art this time and here we are. I certainly wont be making a career change to drawing any time soon.
Thank you again for taking the time to play and collate your thoughts, you're much too kind in your feedback and it is appreciated. There's lots of food for thought.