a) You have to defeat a specific number of enemies for the path to appear. Since it apparently wasn't obvious, I guess I'll add an 'objective' texts that will tell you what to do. (Along with number of enemy required to defeat in order to move forward)
b) This version I'm working on should fix the clunky combat to some extent. Also, after I read your comment I also went to find a way to make combat faster, and the result was.....spectacular. Once I upload it I bet no one will complain about this issue ever again.
c) Each shot actually deals 200 damage. Since the stone enemies have 500 HP, you'll be able to defeat them in 4 hits (1 extra hit because of my shoddy programming XD) So I don't really understand where this problem is coming from, and you're also not the first to report it. I think it's more because the combat was so slow that the enemies seemed tougher than they actually were. Again, the next version will fix this problem.
I'm glad there's some aspect of the story that you liked. Apparently, even the initial 4-minute cutscene was still too long? Hmm...I think I know how to fix this. How about you immediately get right into the action after that cutscene? That'll fix the slow pacing, right? I need to modify the story a bit this way, though. Actually, this seems like a pretty good idea, I'll do this in v.0.1.3.
Not to say that v.0.1.2 will be a trivial update, though. Rather, it will be something that'll certainly fix up the slow pacing and combat issues quite a LOT....though not in a very conventional way.
Tbh I had a pretty negative view of you before, but now I've got a lot of ideas on how to improve my game thanks to you. So, thank you for taking the time to review!