As someone who played a lot of RPGs, I found this to be a fun game loop. I liked having agency to apply XP to my characters and thought it was interesting to only be able to do so when the Absorb meter was full - it added a layer of economy management. There were some balancing issues, like I was waiting to see one of my characters with low HP die, but he never did. Also noticed when I removed the neg stats and absorbed, my HP still went down. Still fun nonetheless; add some polish and juice and this would be a pretty solid entry!