Try getting a new song for the intro. It's not good or fitting. I would get a better picture too, a color reduced painting doesn't work very well for it. In fact I still don't know what it is supposed to be. The scrolling is fairly fast. I guess reading rates would factor in here. I can read it and wait for new text to appear but it might seem fast to some. You can probably do something else with that part of the intro instead, or have parts of that come up in later dialogues among the characters.
The pause between the guy going tell you that there's a small ship following you is a bit awkward. "Lemme wait a bit and stare at him before alerting him of something that is rather urgent". Too much waits in this cutscene when they dock. There seems to be a bunch of waits in cutscenes in general even when they're not always needed.
You use FF graphics which is fine by me, but FF music as well seems a bit overkill. I didn't mind the overworld music since I like that theme, but the fork forest theme is really unfitting as it's meant for a slums. It's also amusing hearing these FF7 songs for a castle and stuff. I did like the Costa del Sol song for the bar, but mostly that's just because I like the song itself.
Steal takes a while for the message to come up and I always get "couldn't steal". Only once out of the many tries I used it, I got a potion. Really bad risk/reward ratio here. I'm never using it again unless there's an accessory for 100% steal rate.
The skills you get seem pretty useless. I think Poach said that you were supposed to get a relic from the enemy if they're low on HP, but I just used it as an alternative form of attack. Did more damage. Even against weak enemies Snipe doesn't seem to work much, steal didn't work for when I tried it. Maybe a new enemy dying sound that doesn't sound like a monster was killed too.
Beginning enemies hit really hard. You have about 100 HP per character and they do 30+ per hit, even the weakest enemies can hit for over 50 damage.
In the overworld near Sassoon, I got owned by a backattack of 3 poison creatures who used a multi-target poison breath. This is way too hard for the level of the characters.
"This minigame will start after you press confirm" --> You press confirm to pass the text --> You laugh and you lose!
The game seems a bit too hard anyway. It seems like it'd be a fair minigame if you had to just copy the moves, but having to remember to mirror it makes it seem more confusing.
Check the passabilities of the clock tiles. The maps aren't bad, I didn't have much complaints about them. Some maps mimic FF5 very well. I liked looting places. A lot of the barrels and crates have items, some which are pretty good. I question having 200G in an Inn that costs 20G to rest, but I'm not complaining. If there's something I like most about this game, it's treasure seeking.
Might just be entirely random but the damage you do seems like the range is really high if it goes from 40 damage to 130+. I'm almost tempted to think it's just a high critical hit rate, but if not, check your formulas or something.
Actually after you leave the forest and get your 4th party member, it seems enemies are too easy. 1 or 3 Goblins or like 2 eagles, and they'll be killed before they get the chance to attack. The only trouble I had after was when they kept missing and in the boss battle when the boss decided to pull a 200+ damage and blind attack to all.
The thief seems far too strong. While I did equip a power up relic for +5 attack, he does more damage than the knight and attacks twice.
I thought Escape was for letting me run with better chance, not for having the only chance to run in the first place! Not only that, I used it twice in a row and both times failed.
Their attacks miss really often.
Thrust isn't all that great, doing 90+ damage. While it's better than the 40 damage she usually does, the thief has been doing about 230 by normal attacks (combination of the 2 hits).
The relic system as it applies in the game so far:
In the first areas, you can buy elemental inflicts and protects, but nothing right now uses it or is weak/strong against it. That could be left until later, status effect inflicts/protects would be more useful for the early game. You find Poison/Stop protects, but the only enemy that used it in the demo that I saw was one that I would not have those protects available for at that time. Since elemental inflicts/protects are fairly costly (though I did get a few), there's no way of knowing which ones you may need first or what would be the better initial purchase. From what I played, it's so far "none".
There are few commands in the early game which is fine for that point, but my main complaint is that they're nearly all useless except for poach, which I only use for higher damage. Nothing else works reliably to be worth it. I sold Steal command for 125 G and that's more use than I got from the innate steal ability. Until you get magic or commands that are reliable/useful, then this one isn't worth it.
Only 2 supports gained so far so not much here to play with. Not that you even have magic or anything so any support you gain would only really be useful if it's power up or evade, which are the only 2 I got.
Not sure how much of a variety you'd get from the Field command but Sprint shoes are definitely needed.
I read from the post that the characters were supposed to be distinct, but I never felt that from reading the game. They seemed really similar or just didn't say much. From reading the other characters, it seems like you can get rid of the 4 and do something like having Geomancy as an acquireable command, The Mystic Knight can be replaced by the existing inflicts/protects and a command, the Archer and Sniper can be combined as they have the same basic function anyway, and then have the wizard one in there. A Monk (2x hit but low defense and a meditate command), a Knight (Good attack and very high defense with limited powerful sword strikes or possibly healing), a Wizard (Multi-target caster), and an Archer (Long range attack + status effect inflicts(+damage) and highest speed) might provide a bit more of a variation between them and help balance them a little bit more although that'd force them into roles (although it's like that currently anyway). It seems like the commands and stuff are there to provide a little bit more experimentation for the already defined characters rather than to really custom create your characters. I'm mostly just writing up whatever random thing comes to mind though since I'm sleepy.
I actually didn't beat the demo, I rescued the king and it's too late for me to keep playing so I'm leaving it as is. I think it's fairly close to end of demo anyway though I may be wrong.
