Making a game which takes inspiration from the "new life in another world" genre isn't something I would have run often into, at least when it comes to RPG Maker games. Therefore Isekai Anthology felt both refreshing and amusing to play, especially since it doesn't take itself too seriously (I chuckled a little at the main character's hopes for more character development).

The story and premise for the game are relatively light - become a legendary manager and make sure that the café produces enough money so that isn't closed down - but provides a sound basis the combination of different game elements: gathering, crafting, combat and exploration. The story is partly told with comics, which is quite an interesting idea and goes with the anime/manga-esque genre, and I found the characters to be quite amusing and in a way "tastefully cliché": not too overdone but yet recognisable stereotypes from the genre.

One of my favourite things in the game was its mapping. Both indoor and outdoor maps are not overly large yet not too small, either, and thanks to good decoration, they look pleasing and are interesting to explore. I also liked how the gathering and crafting system had been implemented to the game: as the UI clearly shows which objects are harvestable, there is little need for blindly clicking on every cave decoration etc., and the crafting system was simple enough not to become a chore yet offered a nice variety of craftable items (and ways to obtain the ingredients). All in all, I found the café management part to be a nice addition to the typical JRPG dungeon crawling and battles, and it could be interesting to see how that aspect develops further in the future versions.

If there was one aspect of the game which I didn't enjoy, it was combat. Most of the battles felt too easy and could be solved by spamming the Attack button because the enemies hit for very little damage; the only exception for this were the ghosts with the Thunder spell. The worst offenders are probably the bees: they usually come in large packs, do 1-10 points of damage but also require 2-3 hits to defeat, which means that the battles can last a couple of minutes but offer little to no challenge.
While the addition of elemental weakness system adds a bit more tactical depth into the battles, there didn't seem to be any other way to discover an enemy's weakness besides blindly trying everything, and I found it confusing how different level (and colour) enemies could have different weaknesses.

Part of the criticism towards battle system can probably be explained with the game's other flaw, namely lack of polish. The game had some minor bugs, glitches and typos, and for instance, Hiroto's skills seemed to be straight copies of the default Hero class skills whereas the other characters had custom skill sequences for their spells.
The lack of polish is somewhat understandable due to the creator becoming ill during the contest period, however, and most of the bugs should be quite easy to fix.

Unfortunately due to real-life complications I was unable to play through the game more than once, but I spent a couple of hours running around and trying out various things. In the end, I feel like the demo shows promise. If combat is developed further and various small tweaks are done after the IGMC contest period is over, I feel that Isekai Anthology could become a very interesting game, especially to fans of the isekai genre.

Pros:
+ relatively unique and amusing idea for an RPG Maker game
+ good mapping
+ crafting system which is simple enough but not dull
+ creative way of telling the story via comics

Cons:
- tedious combat
- lack of polish

Final verdict: 3/5 - While I might not be able to unconditionally recommend the game due to my issues with the combat system and such, I found it amusing and had mostly fun playing it. Hopefully it will be developed further!

Interesting game. Here's my playthrough.

Pleasant game!

I enjoyed the manga-like cutscenes and characters. 
That was a nice stylistic choice and a great way to present the story.
The effort was worth the result, I'd say.

I noticed that battles in the caves were random whereas battles elsewhere were
on-screen encounters. I'd make the cave monsters visible too, because the
encounter rate was really high. I ran away from most of these battles. 

Overall, this was an upbeat and lighthearted experience!

TOTAL PLAYTIME: 55 MINUTES. I mean meowinutes.
Also, I didn't pay the taxman because I'm secretly an outlaw.
That's one truth the catgirls don't need to know...don't ask, don't tell.

FINAL VERDICT: The graveyard implies there's death in this universe.
I'm sad now, nya.

Whatever about nekomimi, I LOVE IT!!!

I'm sorry to hear that illness prevented you from adding in the cafe elements (I was really hoping to check those out!), but I hope you're feeling better now!

There are a lot of elements of this game that I enjoyed in concept, but also quite a few weaknesses as well. The comic book style storytelling is very unique and cute! And I like how many poses you could get for each character by using 3D models for their bases. It's not something I see very often in RPGmaker games, and I think it had a lot of charm. The girls' designs are cute too! I'm a sucker for gathering materials, though I laughed that I could just take whatever I wanted from that farmer's garden. Free tomatoes for life!

Due to the cafe elements getting cut, the gameplay ends up being focused on the dungeons. The dungeons were... not that exciting. Combat was very easy; enemies only ever did 1-3 damage and could easily be killed with nothing more than basic attacks. (I used the MC's spark move only when there were a large number of bees.) I'm not a huge fan of the game switching between random encounters in dungeon 1 and on screen encounters in dungeon 2 either. The first dungeon layout was a lot more interesting. The second dungeon was mapped nicely, but the layout itself wasn't as neat.

The writing was... not for me. Maybe it's my general disdain for isekai, but it came across a little childish for me. and while the comic book format is great, the regular conversation scenes having name boxes moving all over and displaying more than one on screen at a time made some things hard to follow.

I really enjoyed the mapping of the town and first dungeon though! It's always nice to see use of elevation in maps.

Congrats on completing your demo and submitting it!

I really liked the comic cut-scenes.

Well, it was pretty interesting storywise. Not really sure where to find the rest of the maids. Combat is a pretty much the same, with a bit of magic actually hurting me later on. Artwork is great, love the manga style cutscenes. Nice work.