well... I understand what you mean, I had the same feeling too, sometimes... BUT....
remember, Sarah wrote this thing alone and it run on the C=64, so she had to face with some limits:
1) lack of beta testers (I guess); she's trying to do her best to solve some little problems we can find along the way. If you're a programmer (I mean: professional programmer) you know that you can check everything you can think about for days; but when you release your work, your customers will hit in many and many bugs after just few hours (or minutes). It seems to me the game is quite good, almost without bugs. She did a great work (and a lot of test).
2) she must to pack everything inside an 8 bit, 1983 computer...
3) it's terrible hard to write the rules, get a good rhythm, make everything working and still have a playable and enjoyable RPG game. There are some many rules, some many details....
4) maybe it's her first RPG game, must to admit she did an awesome work, all alone. Maybe the sequel will fix some little problems like that, keeping the game more enjoyable.
I will try to play all the game without cheating (must to be said I'm playing in easy mode... no stress, I'm growing old LOL).
Now I know that I must to be careful using my resources. Lesson learnt.
I'm loving the game. I'm playing it with VICE, since my Kung Fu didn't arrive yet, so I haven't that feeling of a C64 game... it seems a more advanced game than a C64 game.