Parrying in vidya never makes any sense since every single game has different timings. I could shield parry literally everything in Dark Souls 1 and yet I had to watch guides on how to do that on Elden Ring, turns out it was completely different
In expedition 33, I'm parrying paper mario style, by simply hitting the parry button right before the damage would register, completely ignore your own animations. You can also just dodge since it's the exact same shit as parrying but easier, only drawback is that you don't get free AP nor the free damage if you do it perfectly
Yeah, go down this hallway, then go to the water hallway, then go to the red tree hallway...
Great, you're also an illiterate nigger. It's as linear as literally any other JRPG, which is what this game is trying to do.
You get 3 different paths right at the start of the tree, therefore it's not linear you retard. The tree also only gives you new active battle skills and you can only equip 6 of them. It's not like ubislop or other games where you unlock 5% + damage and then 20% + damage later as a twist. You get enough freedom to unlock the skills that you want asap