Rogue-Like Discussion, Word Balloons (Patreon)

I wanted to start an open discussion thread on a new change to the game dealing with how text is displayed. In the most recent version, I moved both the "text box" and word balloons to always be in the top left corner of the screen. I did this for several reasons.

1. I felt that the character models were too often being crammed into the far right of the screen, and I wanted room to move them toward the center, but if they were in the center with the centered word balloons, the balloon would cover up their face in standard views.

2. I felt that it was visually distracting to have word balloons at top-center, and the text box at bottom-left, since if they alternated you'd have to shift your eyes from one to the other. Putting them in one place allows for more continuous reading.

Now this system is not "finished" I know that there are some immediate issues with it, and also some things to change. For one thing, menus currently have a habit of growing overly long, making some options run off the screen. I do plan to fix that by at the very least nesting some of these menus to shorten the longer menus, but I also want to figure out how to make double-column menus where necessary. Also the menu graphics themselves can sometimes be tricky to read, I'd like to fix that as well.

For another, I'm aware that not every seen is optimized for the new format, especially the intro scene, which was designed with the old positions in mind. It will not be hard for me to go back in and make sure that the character positions make more sense there.

All that said, I'd like to hear what you guys think, do you agree with my reasons for doing this? Do you think once I've ironed out the above issues that it's a good idea? What should I do slightly differently here? I might move the text stuff slightly more toward the center, while still keeping it off-center. Is there anything else about this system that you'd like to see done differently?

Please keep discussions generally on the way text and menus are displayed, anything else can be discussed elsewhere, but I'd like to stay focused.