Thanks for the feedback!
There was definitely a lot of CRPG inspiration with the game, we tried to be more dialogue and interaction focused rather than combat-focused. From a developer point of view, doing all the state management in RPG Maker events is pretty difficult, hence why some of the quests are quite simple.
We had hopes to give more opportunities for followers, but ran out of time in the end. The time system was designed to encourage multiple playthroughs but in the end we needed to tune it up a bit more, as a lot of the mechanics are too gated, we originally hoped to have a job available at all points of the day, but that fell through :(
I’m glad you enjoyed all the optional characters and stuff to do. That was definitely one of our goals, we wanted the player to be able to choose and make choices that actually affected their play through and the world around them (player race, followers, training, etc)
Thanks again for playing! If you have any questions please let me know!