This is so neat! Yeah, there's a bit of an entry curve, but I went in intending to take my time with it and figure it out, and I only needed to reference the description info on one or two aspects. (The different boxes in the shop was one. The other was trying to see if there was a guide to the encounter symbols. I figured out the green ones, the shop, the basic battle, but there was at least one other I was uncertain about.)
I failed my first rift *very badly*, but went back to the start, looked through the modules again, actually took a shield this time, figured out that multiple weapons is better than one big weapon, went back in, and started succeeding. Then once you can start investing points into the Career, things *really* start to snowball in your favor!
No, the game doesn't hold your hand — it definitely doesn't do that! — but I also think that there are enough context clues that there aren't all that many aspects that aren't *figure-outable*.
The presentation is — ahem — *stellar*. The scene transitions in particular are A+, the spritework (especially the backgrounds) is fantastic, and this is a tiny, weird thing to highlight, but I really love the rotating title screen menu. I dunno, something about it's just really nice.
Genuinely great job on this one.