Thanks for playing and reviewing my game!
As I feared, my choice of using sprites for the dialogue ended up being confusing... however I am very glad you noticed the animation before the attack (the back lighting up): trying to give the player some decent feedback in spite of the low resolution and me having a lot to learn when it comes to drawing animations (and drawing in general) was my main goal for this project. The final boss especially was rather fun to make, having 3 different (and differently telegraphed) attacks and two phases.