I just finished chapter VIII.
It took me 13 hours as I spent a lot of time sight seeing and grinding.
Now my comments:
It was extremelly good, so much so the few bad points don't matter a damn.
I Liked:
The mapping, although crowded it was very pretty, if it wasn't pretty I may not have started playing it yet so it was the prettiness that got me started.
The music was extraordinary, easily the best in game music I have heard, it just suited so perfectly that you had to concentrate to hear it as it just added to the mood without you noticing, but when you did concentrate you realized how good it was.
The lighting was excellent, that too set the mood perfectly.
The blured closeup superimposed on the scene was well done, it doesn't matter you used it a lot, its kind of like the trade mark of the game.
The battle system was good, although it caught me off guard as I was expecting a turn based system like other RPG maker games.
The comedy moments were good, a welcome change.
The evade the guards bit was excellent, never seen anything like it before (a free tip: if you make it past a few guards to a safe spot where you can't be detected, save the game so you can resume from there BUT leave one save spot free early on in case you make a wrong turn).
The haunted house bit too was excellent, almost worthy of a seperate game, you would have to make it longer though, I love the way it ended, again unexpected.
I Liked Less:
Been said many times already, starting chapters, brilliant story but the interaction was poor (no it wasn't 'cos there wasn't any). It needs more user input to get the player involved earlier, I would have given up on the game early on except I heard how good the story was so I stuck at it.
Battle system I liked except the battle ground was often too crowded, too often I got cornered with no way out, even behind a tree where I couldn't see myself or the enemy, I just kept pressing 'Q' and hoped for the best. It needs a lot of empty space so you can make a run for it easier.
Some speech isn't correct, you need some one who's primary language is English to proof read, one example that stands out is reference to the 'Flower hair pins...give it back to him' should be plural give 'them' back (2 occurances of this).
I disliked gathereing all that crap early on an not using any of it.
During the battle when you would use some of the found crap you can't because its real time, maybe the ability to pause the battle so we can take medicine or use an offensive item.
I disliked all that grinding was just wasted as by the time I got to chapter 7 or 8, I was back to level 1, I suspect this will be addressed when all the chapters are done and they are all merged into one big game.
The only place in the game I didn't know what to do was in th ewinter carnival, I was stuck there for hours, I tried everything, haunted house, bought all the teddys, got the tiger hair, played each game at least once, bought and used many 'nuts' (he he, I liked that bit), wasted all my coins so I could bankrupt the coin giver, spoke to everybody many times, got everybodies fortune read. I had to come here and read the forum to discover what had to be done, seems the one game I sucked at so I didn't play much is the one I had to get a reasonable score in to advance the game, maybe a NPC could hint that you need a specific score to win a special prize or something that gives a similar hint.
I liked the mapping even with the red arrows showing the exit points but is it necessary to display them all the time, I feel they should be only turned on by a special keypress to show the way, is it even necessary to only exit a map at just one or two points, why not anywhere you can squeeze through th erocks and trees, (which could be used to restrict access to areas of th emap you don't want an exit point).
Not enough save points, you need to save the game almost immediatly after a difficult battle, not after a lengthy dialog following the battle, I'm sure most people would be getting rather anxious waiting for an opportunity to save, I know I was, I was finding myself rushing through the dialog just so I could save incase the power goes off or the computer spits the dummy or similar.
Related, not enough save places, 3 save places, thats a bit measly, during other RPG games I would use all 99 save places, sometimes more, just 3, I almost had a heart attack.
Now the bad bit is bigger than the good bit, I hope you don't take it the wrong way, I really liked this game, I feel it has the porential to be the greatest RPG maker game ever, hence the comment. As far as revamping the early chapters, I feel it would be best to finish the whole game first before going back as all too often I have seen excellent games abandonded at a late stage for whatever reason despite everybody creating an uproar, I would really hate that to happen to this game, so please don't take this critisism as a negative view of the game, it isn't, I just want it to be perfect.
Last comment: I feel you need to decide if its going to be a RPG game, an adventure game or an interactive novel, it seems to be all three at the moment (not that it matters to me, I still enjoyed it). Personally I would like to see it developed into a RPG fully, where leveling up, weapons etc play a bigger role, it would be the best ever, it wouldn't take much to split up the lengthy non-interactive bits with exploring, fighting, whatever, inbetween - it makes a lot of difference and it wouldn't matter if the game was 100 hours long or more.
