Finished playing this and enjoyed it! The middle part made me sweat a little since I was getting really bad draws and was being carried by lucky crits from my minotaur, who was honestly my MVP the whole way through. The swarm at the end where you fight the guy with throwing knives was also a point where I only got through because of some pretty good luck. I thought making the boss move without warning as soon as you attack him was kind of a dick move, and the village that gives move+1 is really weirdly placed... You're already being pressed to hurry, so I sent a monster to that village (a ballistician who had already missed both of his shots) and wasted it. The extra move bought me an extra turn of letting that ballistician kite the cerberus rider, but I was mostly just thinking "really, are you kidding me".
From a technical standpoint this game is awesome. Love the card drawing and the balance was surprisingly good, and more importantly cool. The assassin's gimmick was probably my favorite, besides that minotaur whose back probably aches from carrying me so hard. Stacking buffs on him was really fun and had that card game feeling to it. I appreciate how useful the buffs are, too; I think you mayyy have erred on the side of them being too good over too boring, which was the absolute right call. The fairy dancers were also neat, mostly because of the 3-turn timer that I thought was really interesting. On another note I would die for Sarah
The balance is good, the cards are dope, and a couple of the encounters turned out really fun, especially near the end when I started drawing better cards (not sure if coincidence or design). Kiting the cerberus with summons that had fallen behind was fun. Mostly I'm just not in love with the map design and most of the first half, the fun of which seems to rely very very heavily on what you happen to draw due to how dangerous the enemies are and how shaky the hit rates are for the most part without any real way to improve them. I saw you said in another review that you had improved hit rates in an update, so I'd hate to imagine what they used to be like.
All in all, great concept and execution of the main mechanic, but I think the level itself holds it back. That is, the parts that are still Fire Emblem are what I feel are lacking, haha. All the interesting enemies are saved for the end, and luck is a huge factor in how annoying the early and middle parts are, not just in draws but also accuracy and crits.