Can I say it's... an unfortunate choice of examples to emulate. And yes, I know, KP is probably the go-to example of turn-based battlefuck.
So with lona, I think, there isn't much to say other than it's such a jankfest, it's pathetic. It does a lot of things that degrade the smoothness of mechanics as a pathway to "difficulty", and it probably does that intentionally. Don't do that, absolutely do fucking not. I think you can do real-time combat exciting, just look towards more dynamic and polished combat. Look outside of adult games altogether. If not, then look at adult platformers, metroidvanias. This is real-time combat, and we have some nice examples here. Bullet heaven is genre option too, although I can't name many successful examples in the adult space. Which is a shame, because I feel A LOT of interesting stuff can be done with bullet heaven, if each upgrade has a sex "price" attached for the heroine. (As a tangent, in a normal game I like twin-stick, but... it's an adult game, a single stick control scheme may be actually better, for obvious reason)
With turn-based, esp modeled in the vein as KP, the problem is often the grind, and surprisingly a lack of tactical options. To me, KP felt needlessly drawn out because A) multiple waves is just a form of a damage sponge B) multiple battle phases, ruled by nested menus is just drawing out stuff so needlessly. If you're looking for interesting turn-based combat, I'd say Going Deeper, EroDungeons, or Corrupted Saviors are better games to use as a source of inspiration.
Overall, I feel like turn-based combat is easier to implement decently in an adult game, and easier to innovate on it too. I'd love a porn version of 20 mins till dawn, but I feel it's just harder for a designer to make it happen.
