Many of the ambient loops aren't done correctly. Never once noticed this
There should be footstep sounds, but aren't. Pretty sure this is done on purpose, as there are times when footsteps are used to increase suspense.
The audio, like the art, fluctuates greatly. Some audio is actual sound while other is 8bit. I agree with the art in some places, but this is a very personal issue and the majority of people will not see this as a problem
Save spots are oddly placed. I have to walk miles just to set myself up to fix an error I made in a bossfight, for example, get myself extra items from a store eons away. There are plenty of short-cuts to get to places such as the ones you mentioned, and about the save points, again I never noticed any problem with these.
You die in a bossfight, right at the end, because of something pointless, just to restart it all over again. ?
You die anywhere and the last save ends up to be before pointless, small things, or is generally very far away from where you had died. Pointless walking. Again, most save points are put in good positions and only a few I noticed were too far apart.
The game uses too much 'lul randum' humor. Not that bad though. I loved the humor, and from what I have seen, many other people have too
The art in the game differs way too much. You play as a fat dora the explorer that doesn't have the ability to make a single expression and yet bosses seem to be expertly crafted. Animation is also a part of this. Some bosses are real cool, animated real well, yet your character has an amazing 4 frames of animation total. The art style is an issue, but not a major one, and are you really hitting on the animation? That's just nitpicking.
There don't seem to be any sidequests, and you're on a pretty linear story that just changes around like a line-graph depending on what you do. There are "side quests", so this is incorrect.
Absolutely no settings, at all. Very little, but there are. This is an issue though.
No volume sliders. Ever heard of windows volume mixer?
No graphics settings, though that's passable, because the game's not demanding. Self answered.
No resolution settings. Either fullscreen or really tiny. Another settings problem
The random encounters you have seem pointless. Like, some of the things that the monsters do, why is that specific action physically able to do damage? Don't get what you are saying.
Lots of random characters that don't seem to have any reason to exist than to magically appear for some pointless fight. Some characters are actually seen elsewhere in the game, so it's not irregular when you fight them, but some things are never even seen anywhere. All characters are seen in the game at some point, or at least a vast majority of them.
You have to watch the opening cutscene every time, though skippable. If it's skippable, how is this a problem?
Music is way too loud at times. Also a problem, music volume does fluctuate
A lot of these problems that you listed are incredibly small and have no reason to bring down the games credibility as you mentioned it should. The only major problem that MIGHT hurt the game is the lack of settings, specifically volume.
In my book its still a solid 9/10, and while it did not change my life, as no game has, its an incredible journey that did leave an impact on me and did so within 12 hours.