I agree that the animations should play regardless, if anything, I'd say that the climax animations should be locked behind either losing or winning, and if you go all 3-4 turns without winning twice or losing twice, it simply ends with no extra effects. Of course, this would mean you would need 2 different climax animations for each scene progression, one for lily and one for the attacker, but I believe it'd be worth it. This would allow you to even make certain enemies like the mimic immune to being stunned, and you'd have to break out in a certain amount of turns or else you'll be stunned.
Also, for a difficulty setting, could literally just make the QTE box larger, instead of the rather small rectangle that it is now (Though I will say it's still not that difficult even on bosses yet) that would be fantastic for a medium or hard difficulty, but you don't need that much unused screen space during the QTE if you're not trying to make it more difficult by spawning attacks closer to the cursor.



