I dropped this around that same point for the same reason, so I’d also be curious to know if it improves.
I actually finished this game the other day. The calendar does have a purpose when you unlock shop customer requests, and also the banker NPC (both from the bulletin board) but even then it’s not terribly useful. The gameplay loop stays pretty much the same throughout… get loot in dungeon to make money to upgrade gear to get farther into dungeon to eventually unlock the next dungeon, etc.
Once you’ve upgraded all your gear from the loot in the current dungeon, there’s never really a reason to go back to older dungeons, because you need drops from the most recently unlocked dungeon to upgrade gear again, and the loot that drops is more valuable than stuff from the old dungeons. Customer requests occasionally ask for items from previous dungeons, but they’re not usually worth taking.
Overall, I enjoyed the game, but wouldn’t say it was an amazing experience. It never really got super complex, and in fact when the game ended, I was somewhat taken by surprise, because I wasn’t expecting it to end when it did. I didn’t really ever feel particularly challenged (I was playing on “hard” which for some reason is this game’s version of “normal”).
Thanks for the writeup! Confirms that it’s probably not worth my time to play it through. I enjoyed the couple of hours I’ve spent with it, but don’t just want to rehash the same loop over and over.