Was specifically referring to the bandit during the "save cecily" mission. I had to look up a video walkthrough to complete it. Turns out I have to stun the bandit then talk to Cecily to get her and Gray Rat to kill the bandit. The guide was fucking me over by specifically telling me to kill the bandit myself before talking to Cecily.
This game is honestly a chore to play. The combat is jank, the companion AI is braindead half the time, the missions basically require a guide or about 50 safe scums to complete, and I frankly find the stamina system this game uses to be ridiculously annoying. I'm honestly tempted just to use a cheat mod to make myself a lot stronger so I don't have to essentially AFK and hope my companions kill everything before me or Cecily dies.
This game leans pretty hard on knowledge check and thinking outside the box. In typical RPG, killing would be the answer to pass through a situation, and since most RPG players are used to this gameplay flow, this is the first thing that come to mind whenever a situation involves dealing with ennemies. This is a sandbox RPG, there's no real concise direction, you have freeedom of options here, it's up to you whether or not you want to experiment. You found out that instead of killing the bandit, you just had to stun him, free up Cecily and have her and Gray Rat kill this stunned bandit in your place. This is what thinking outside the box is. The way to deal with one situation isn't linear. Don't shy away from consulting guide if you get stucked. That's the whole point of learning.
Though I can understand your frustration regarding the game's main mechanics. The first time I played this game, I also went through lots of struggle, however in my case, I got super addicted to the game instead of being put off. I personally think most of the negatives you brought up are a positives to me. The janky combat (or slow/controlled combat as I like to call it) is a positive to me since it enhances the strategic aspect of the game like positioning, taking advantage of environment, etc which is my preferred type of real-time combat as opposed to a typical hack and slash with a more fast paced combat. The stamina makes you want/need to plan your moves. Not having this stamina system and going with the typical HP/MP design would make this game extremely easy and far less interesting since lots of unique and interesting tricks proper to a game like LonaRPG relies on this stamina system.
Still I get it's not for everyone, there's lots of micromanagement and hard thinking to do in early play. This game is a RPG first that's akin to a Dark Soul game before being a porn game (there's very little porn content for you to enjoy here, unless you like super violent porn).
