Hey, thanks for the feedback!
Glad you're digging the art and music, I'm always looking to improve music and get a stronger vibe going. I love that stuff, makes or breaks a game for me.
On traits - I'm not super happy with the threat traits either, but still figuring out how I want to handle them. May swap them to instant or channel abilities as you suggested.
You can rightclick at any time, even in combat, to see all stats/traits/abilities for you and all allies, and turn off abilities you don't want to use/don't want allies to use!
Mastery mechanics may change a bit down the road so I don't want to make major changes, but I can look into adding a small indicator in combat. That shouldn't be too hard.
Status effects on sprites are a fair issue, I won't have time for it this update but I was considering adding a panel that shows all enemy names/health bars/statuses at all times and moving statuses off of the sprites.
You can view trust/affection from the rightclick menu, but I could look into adding it in the ally select menu. I'm not sure how easy it'd be to do the "next scene at:" idea, but I'll put it on the list of things to try!