Thank you very much for your feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed the characters.
I agree that in retrospect, the level design didn't meet my goals in that the levels are slowly paced and not well balanced. The enemy AI was not as aggressive as we had intended, due to spending too much time implementing the tactical engine instead. As a result, enemies often took longer to reach and extended the battles.
Faster battle pacing in general has been a common critique of this game, and I'll definitely test having shorter, more interactive battles in any future games I make. :-)