1.2, the "d757 Patch" - Clarity in systems, balancing in numbers

First, I want to thank d757gaming for streaming my game and being a fair judge of the game. He was great, and his audience was great too. You have a good community you are fostering, I hope you will keep it going for a long time to come.
You can watch his stream of my game here:

With that said, I took notes of some things he pointed out, as well as a few notes of things he might not have commented on, but may have misunderstood my intent.

Let's start by talking about a new difficulty mode! Inspired by the very first bug with my game, an inability to save, I have now added a Perma-Death mode to the game. This optional mode will disable all of the save points (the save points are still present, but activating them will just give you a haunting message.) It can also act as a sort of speed-running mode, since I have altered story events to be much quicker. If you feel confident that you understand all of the game systems and mechanics, I dare you to take on this mode. Death means you lose all your progress.

Now, let's talk about all the other changes made...

• The Confidence Booster had a description typo fixed.
• in addition to that typo, the Confidence Booster now grants 8% MP per turn, up from 5%.
• Alone's default attacks now play an appropriate elemental animation.
• Removed access to the "stats" menu from game menu.
• Some clarifying dialogue was added to the switch used to activate the monster hall in Level 2.
• Some additional clarifying dialogue was added to the Game Manual in the "Combat (General)" section. This clarifying dialogue 1) Makes clear the combat should be treated more as a puzzle and less as a "do the big numbers to kill". 2) Provided an example combat scenario to demonstrate weaknesses, attack order, and "target priority" (or in other words, what the player should focus on killing first).
• On a similar note, though not part of the game directly, the description on the itchi.io page has also been updated to clarify "combat is a puzzle".
• The difficulty selection at the start of the game has been reworded to give a better idea of how the flow of combat should go, hopefully prompting players to make a more informed decision about which difficulty is right for them.
• The healing spell now has a description to make it more consistent with the other spells.
• The Slime's MP steal attack formula has been adjusted, now stealing MP based on 2 + player's level.
• Enemies *ACTUALLY* start at 0 MP properly now.
• During some cut-scenes, player movement has now been restricted.
• The tutorial rolling ball in Level 2 can no longer be activated twice.
• The first scripted fight before the first lever in Level 1 has had the number of enemies reduced from 7, down to 5.
• Fixed an exploit that made it possible to skip the final boss.
• And last in this list, a new and improved introductory tutorial system. I'll explain this below, outside of the bullet points

At the start of the game, there are 3 encounters; a slime, then a bat, then a Mighty Chicken. These combat encounters are intended to be required and are intended to introduce the player to what these enemies can do (what are their attacks? How threatening are they to Fidel's health and confidence?). The problem was that they would die too quickly before demonstrating their abilities. In addition to that, it was possible to completely ignore these tutorial fights all together if the player moved quick enough. So the tutorial encounters have been reworked as following:

• Enemy encounters are now scripted. There is some stuff going on in the back-end making sure that the player will have an opportunity to see all of the enemies attacks. So, it is no longer possible to kill an enemy before they use their special attack.
• The boulders and jump pads between encounters are now locked and inaccessible until the player defeats the tutorial monster. Once the tutorial monster is defeated, Fidel will make a comment informing the player they can now progress further (and the boulders and jump pads will be activated).
• Defeating the tutorial mobs will now remove the encounter, preventing the player from accidentally (or purposefully if you're that crazy) triggering the fight twice.

On a similar note, the introduction of the new monster types in Level 2 has had some adjustments.

• You are now able to run from the first encounter. If you use escape during the encounter, this will reset Fidel and the encounter, as well as giving a hint to the player what they need to do to win the encounter.

(I'm writing this short paragraph since after the release of 1.2)
I've found a couple more typos, and some balancing concerns. Technically, shouldn't be too difficult to patch those right quick, but this game was only built to be a small test of some RPG Maker stuff, and I feel like the amount of time I've dedicated to patching and balancing the game since release is way more than necessary. That isn't to say I am done entirely patching the game, but it is more than likely that I am. I would like to move on to other projects.

Finally, a couple pieces of housekeeping;

• My friend loves to point out "Fidel Castro", the dictator of Cuba, and how my character "Fidel" shares the same name. I'm aware of the similarity, actually became aware of that fact a few weeks ago. Fidel actually is not pronounced as it looks, but was originally intended to be a bastardization of the word "Fiddle" (as you may note, her speaking voice in the game is a violin, as well as her jump sounds). However, clearly my bastardization of the word is...not the best. At this point, I won't change Fidel's name in this game, but going forward, any future projects will likely use a new spelling. (Since Fidel is actually intended to be part of a bigger project, she will be a reoccurring character.) *Actually, I don't really care. I like the spelling of Fidel now, so I'm keeping it.
• I'm aware Fidel's placement in the side-view battle is rather high. I've looked into how to adjust her placement to make it more centered, but was unable to find any information outside of using plugins. Unfortunately, the use of plugins is outside of the scope of this project, since it was just a game built with the intent of testing out some of the base RPG Maker tools, so I will not be implementing plugins to correct this issue. If, however, there is an option within vanilla RPG Maker to adjust the player's position in the side view battle, then please let me know.
• If you are entering this game with the mindset of "An RPG Maker game..." then you are approaching it wrong. This is a game that is made in RPG Maker, not an RPG Maker game.
• Lastly, I don't want to be that elitist asshole, but...if, despite all my balancing and changes to the game, you are still struggling...I added the game manual into the game for a reason...so before complaining about the difficulty of the game...rtfm. I have play tested the game extensively and know that it is very much possible to complete, I've also compromised a lot on the balancing to make it far more fair on players - so you can't say I never met you halfway. If, despite the reduced difficulty, despite the improved balancing, and despite all the clarification to the way the combat should work you are still having trouble: read the manual. If you are still having trouble: play a different game.

Anyways, my gatekeeping and elitism aside, I appreciate your continued support and feedback about the game. It's been a very eye-opening experience seeing the way players interact with my game. I hope you enjoy the new update! Is this the last one? Who knows.