After listening to the whole thing and writing out my review, I want to say that the issues I had were so incredibly minor/niche that they should mostly be viewed as relative to me. In other words, you did a fantastic job overall, I'm just giving you a few bits that popped out to me and my ears so please don't take them as significant criticisms. Your use of the main theme throughout the soundtrack was masterfully done, even working it into the final boss theme in a way that I myself could definitely learn from! This is an excellent submission overall!
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Right off the bat, Utopia sets the stage beautifully. The guitar melody that makes up the main theme is simple yet powerful, and will no doubt be coming in and out of my head throughout the day.
Your instrument choice is great throughout the soundtrack, with the pizzicato strings in Imagination painting the picture that you outlined in your description perfectly.
One very minor grievance - I would have liked if you had put the description of the songs (file select, opening, etc) in your Soundcloud track titles so I didn't have to go back and forth. It bothered me enough that I realized I should go back and do it on my submission, as well ahahaha
Half way through your soundtrack, everything thus far has served the purpose you set out well, and feel cohesive as an album while still being diverse enough to avoid anything blending together. The shorter length songs are an excellent lesson in keeping things short, sweet and to the point. There are no wasted notes, everything is just long enough to establish its intended purpose and move on. In that way, it is very reminiscent of older SNES jRPG or PS1 soundtracks in style and composition. Lufia II comes to mind for me due to your instrument choice, specifically, but this soundtrack would have fit at home in a Tales or a Dragon Quest game as well.
Illusion Lake continues to keep things just varied enough to be interesting with a nice piano lead. The chords you used here were deceptive in that my brain immediately went to "dungeon" (ala FFIV or Octopath) but the main theme comes back in afterwards to remind me we are just relaxing and fishing. An alternate version of this track as a dungeon theme that continued the path the piano laid out would be really interesting to hear!
Your battle theme sounds great! I can definitely tell it's not a real guitar on the higher notes, but that's not an actual criticism; more a detail that only matters an idiot like me who goes through way too much effort to make their MIDI guitars sound realistic lmao. For your acoustic guitars up to this point - it was realistic and genuine enough sounding that my ears never really dwelled too much on if it was an actual recorded guitar or not. Also, did you layer a clap or something similar on top of your snare? I only noticed it on the first listen, and it doesn't sound bad, it just caught my ear for some reason as sounding a little strange the first time I heard it. Regardless of these minor details, the battle theme slaps - it has a great hook, builds up nicely and has a lovely little break around 0:40 that keeps the hype flowing. Very well done!
Maybe I'm picking here, but Deja Vu sounds like the drums are a tiny bit too forward for it's intended purpose? I checked back halfway through listening to see what it's intended purpose was, and tbh I had to listen to it a couple times to get a picture of Victory Theme in my head. I get it, now, the first few notes are perfect; but something about the bass or the drums feels like it's a little strong - the track overall feels more like world map music or something to my ear. That said, the rest of what was going on in the song outside of the low end felt pretty on point for victory music.
Eternal Sleep ends on a chord that would make me very depressed if I got a game over and heard this ahahaha. Great job!
Solid work on the final boss theme! The main theme popping up again is done so well here, it feels like a payoff for the whole soundtrack. It feels related to the battle theme while not being too far removed from it, and for the most part appropriately upgraded in magnitude. my one critique here is that I might have brought the strings between 0:45 and 1:07 more forward to keep the overall energy of the song high. That's probably the weakest part of the song, imo, the rest of it definitely feels "final bossy" enough.
Overall, definitely the most musically thought out submission I've heard so far. Excellent work!