The lack of magic attack upgrades is noted, and the grinding being unrewarding is my fault- mistakes to learn from.
The game is not unbeatable since you don't need to defeat the dragon(Or clear the tower) to get 1,000,000,000G- you can grind that out with quests (which would take awhile!) The dragon and tower are just shortcuts. Of course, I added the dragon and tower specifically so you wouldn't have to grind it out if you didn't want to if, say, grinding felt unrewarding =X
Either way, I don't think I'll be rebalancing this old game.
I've uploaded a download that should fix the progress-halting bugs, however.
I still wonder though- did you press X when in front of the Volcano warp? Because it turns out its not a touch warp but an interaction warp. Unintuitive, I know.