Eventing
This seems to be your strong point here. Your events during the intro are very well done. I would've liked to see more of this throughout the game. There isn't a whole lot else I can say, as I didn't get to any other significant event locale.
Mapping
As someone mentioned earlier, your mapping is done really well in some parts of the game. The intro sequence comes to mind here. It looks like you have a few custom tilesets in there as well, which is always a plus. However, you have a few little errors in mapping that stood out to me, mostly in usage of tiles:
-Canvis as a whole really lacks in comparison to the rest of the game. I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a dirt road or not, but it felt a little out of place with the random grass patches on the edges. I think this is also something that someone else mentioned.
-The small tilesets that you're using as counters are not counters. I'm no expert on mapping myself, but I'm close to positive that those are supposed to be wall fixtures/shelves. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, it's the little tan table things with bags or books or bottles on them.
-The houses felt a little spacious in Stonemill, or at least the Crescent house. These are little farm shacks, not suburban houses. Also, there are only three beds in the Crescent house. Where does Gregory sleep?
-The item shop in Stonemill felt a little off. There were too many random tables and the wall fixtures being used as counters. I felt like there could've been more shelves and maybe some chairs to go along with those tables.
-In the inn in Canvis, the grandfather clock extends to the floor tiles. Again, this is a wall fixture, not a stand-up clock.
-Outside Jagger's cabin is a little bland. A lot of trees on homogenous grass tile doesn't really do it for me. No ground is that homogenous.
-The chests you use are a little on the small side, but that's just a personal dislike and not really a problem.
Music
It's alright, to say the least. There weren't any tunes that really caught my attention, but they were fine for their purpose. My only gripe was that during the intro, it talks about someone dying and the music stays happy.
Gameplay
Though I didn't have any major problems with the gameplay, I also didn't have any big likes, which in itself would be a problem.
Here's a few points that did stand out to me though:
- Your menus were done pretty well, namely in the separation of items by their type. I liked that.
- Mixology was interesting for a little while until I realized there were only four types of liquid that you could collect, though there may have been more down the line. It was a little frustrating to me that I couldn't just drink the water or the fruit juice or the alcohol by themselves, though.
- Your skills are interesting, particularly the assist system. That was something I don't see too often. I also liked the skill equipment system, though I thought it was a little redundant to have the skills have an equip cost and still offer a limited number of slots.
-Difficulty level was fairly good. Obviously I am stuck now, but that could also be a good thing. I don't like the "healing boss" idea though, especially if he generally heals about as much as what your characters do in one turn (without crits or skills). It just prolongs the fight for really no good reason. I have some other comments about the battle system, but I'll get into those soon.
-The puzzle in the front guard room was a little silly, as I could stand right in front of the guards and not get caught.
-I'm not sure why you disabled the dash function in the rest of the game. There's no need to have this disabled, as it just unnecessarily prolongs certain sequences.
-I found the battles themselves to be rather boring. I didn't feel like there was much dynamic outside of spamming A for most of the fights except in the case of bosses, which added the extra step of poisoning them first (as poison is quite OP). Though the sideview battle system looks nice, in essence it doesn't add anything to the dynamic of the battle itself.
-Though I liked that you tried to spice this up with the tactical battle element, I felt like these were even more boring than the regular battles. I only got a chance to play the first one, but this just wasn't doing it for me. There were too many AI characters and only three characters for you to control. In general the mass number of characters added a bit of lag to the scene, but most of the time this wasn't a big deal because the computers were the ones moving around. There was nothing tactical about the battle whatsoever, as it was basically a battle of numbers. Even Zachariah, the computer character on the far left, could've been left alone to kill the soldier by him. I would probably go so far as to say as that the regular battles were probably more tactical than that.
I had also expected the tactical battle to be the exciting climax to that scene, but it went on to contain more forced regular battles, making the tactical battle feel even more out of place.
Also, on a more specific note, be aware that "2/3 Random Enemies" skills don't translate well in GTBS. Jack's Broad Bolt skill only hits one enemy despite it hitting all enemies in a regular battle...something you may want to consider changing.
-The inn sequencing is horribly annoying to me. Unless the inn itself is connected to part of the story, I want to go to an inn to quickly recover and save. The extra scene of walking around in the room and then having to manually go to a bed and choose to sleep as well as having to pay money to use the save point was a little unnecessary. Eliminating this would also eliminate the need for a room key, which again is an unnecessary prolonging.
Characters
Graphically I thoroughly enjoyed the characters. I liked that most of the characters were XP converts--whether or not you did that yourself, I don't know, but they looked good anyway. The only real problem I had was that the hero sprite (I'm not sure about with Motley, but I definitely noticed with Juno and Bri) was a little off center. I couldn't tell if it was that they were bigger than the other sprites or something else, but they did appear to be a few pixels longer than the other ones.
However, the characters themselves I had a problem with. As a whole, the characters felt very flat. Juno is a naive but courageous individual, Bri is a caring sister type, Motley is a so-what rebel, and Jack is a justice-minded fighter. Even Rinke--a corrupt, bitter guard captain. I don't want to be able to describe a character's personality very accurately in four words or less. Show some complexity! It's alright to have some flat characters, but they shouldn't be your main characters.
Before I get into individual comments, just a few general points about the characters:
-It seems that at the beginning of the story, they all (except Juno) speak with what I'm guessing is supposed to be a Southern accent. Being from the South and having an accent of my own, I felt like this was a little overdone. Regardless, It's not necessary to translate every facet of an accent into text, as it's better to be more subtle and supplement that with context.
-Later in the story, namely after the attack on Stonemill, the characters seem to lose their accents. This is both good and bad. Good because of the above reasons, but bad also in that it breaks the consistency. Regardless of whether or not a decision is good or bad, if you decide to go with it, you need to stay consistent throughout. For example, if you've seen the show Heroes, you'll notice that in the first couple of episodes, Mohinder speaks with an Indian accent. But a few episodes later, he has a British accent instead. Though as a whole it doesn't affect much, it comes across as somewhat sloppy.
-I found it a little strange that all these kids knew how to fight and were classified as "Warrior" and "Ranger," etc. They're farmers, but they know all these sword tricks and magic attacks. This doesn't feel realistic to me. Basic skills are understandable, but enough skill/power to kill trained soldiers (or people like Jagger)? Jack is the most understandable in this situation as he seems to have been working with this resistance for a while, but otherwise I'm not buying it.
-Someone mentioned this earlier as well, but Juno I generally associate with a woman. The goddess, for example, or the pregnant teenager played by Ellen Page. Similarly, the name Morrigan I associate immediately with the Darkstalkers character, who is very female. How did Juno end up with the name Juno and then his brother got "Jack"? His dad's Gregory, even.
-Some of the dialogue is a little too obvious in hinting what needs to be done next, or just isn't necessary at all. "Canvis is southeast from here." Well, of course, it's the only thing on the map besides the castle. "It started raining and it's getting dark." We can see both of these things from the weather effect and the screen tint.
-Not all guards are bitter sociopaths, and the occasional comic relief "dumb guards" aren't really anything new either. This seems to be a common theme in a lot of games.
-Aaralyn doesn't really seem like a well-defined character, and her knowing how to fight makes the least sense. She's introduced as a ditzy girl who only seems to care about Motley, but suddenly she changes into a battle-hungry amazon woman. Clearly this is triggered by Motley's death, but it's a little too drastic of a turnaround for a character we know so little about.
-The rhyming ghosts were really, really cheesy.
Plot
The plot here is nothing special, though in fairness I haven't seen the other half of the game. However, there are a few things that stand out to me here (This is mostly a notedump here).
-My problems with the inn first came about when I was forced to go to the inn and buy a room in the first place. All Bri needed was a quiet place to talk. Why couldn't they have gone outside of the city or in one of the alleyways by the houses?
-Why didn't Bri stay for the whole conversation, or at least more of it so she could have a better grasp of the situation?
-I find it hard to believe that Juno and Bri, the most straight-edged of all the farm kids, would decide to go find Jagger and then subsequently kill him rather than just run away. They don't get a key from his body or anything, so why couldn't they just run out the front door? That's not so much the issue as is that I think that they're old enough to understand the gravity of the situation they're about to put themselves into, and yet they still naively do it regardless.
-I'd think that the guy would find it suspicious that they suddenly acquired a Black Rose Pin. I feel like with those sets of circumstances, he would let Rinke in with a pin if he had one.
-Why would they let Motley into this society but not tell Juno or Bri a thing about it?
-How did Sawyer get in the castle to make a map?
-I don't understand how nobody else seemed to notice that right next to the village was this massive snowfield with a cave that had a frozen woman in it.
-Though I think it's good that Motley was killed to give the main characters some more motivation, I don't think they went about it in the right fashion. Hanging him at the castle was alright, but I think it would've been more powerful in game and out of game if he was publicly executed in Stonemill in front of all the villagers. That way he would've been a more vivid example of what happens when you try to mess with the soldiers.
-One of the characters says that Motley didn't deserve his fate, which is entirely untrue. Although it's true that he was harassed by the soldiers, he DID try to poison the captain as well as kill several other soldiers. I just feel like the characters believing this gives them an unjust motive.
-Juno suddenly gets the ability to summon this Ice Maiden for his overdrive attack, but he doesn't question this power suddenly coming to him. He knows and accepts it readily, which I'm not buying.
-This probably should go under the gameplay section, but I didn't quite see the point of evacuating everyone before the fight if the only person to be evacuated was the bunny bartender.
-If Juno wanted to kill Rinke so badly, he shouldn't have let him just walk through after you defeat him in that boss fight. He killed their father, yet they just step aside and let him walk right out of town instead of getting vengeance. Even if Jack didn't want him to be killed, Juno should've at least tried to do something before he left instead of getting upset after he left.
Alright, that's it for my note dump.
General Impression
Overall, your game is well executed in terms of its aesthetics, and it definitely looks like it could be very close to being a finished product. There are a few small errors in that sense, but those are miniscule and don't make all that big of a difference in the long run.
What needs the most work right now, in my opinion, are your characters and gameplay, though I may be quick to judge having not played the second half of the demo. What you have right now is acceptable, but it's not really anything unique that sets it apart from any other game of the same genre. Make your characters more dynamic and memorable, and try to make your gameplay more riveting. In all, there's a lot of potential here, but it's not quite there yet.
Good job on what you have so far, though. I'll try giving it another shot when I have some more free time.
