Thanks for such a detailed response! It's really appreciated and nice to know you enjoyed it so much. I can't reply to everything, but I'll try to explain a few points you made.
- I agree the left-aligned text is a bit jarring, but that was because the centred text had an even more jarring effect with how the letters typed out, causing the whole block of text to jump around on-screen whenever a new line was needed. It made reading too awkward, so I settled for left-aligned text and made a mental note to fix the centre-aligned issue next time.
- The zoomed-in portraits were a way for me to (try to) address one of my main issues with VN presentation, which is how the player's eyes are usually focused on the dialogue box only, so the character portraits can be ignored entirely. Putting the speaker's face in the same area the player is already looking could address that problem, but I might need a different solution. I made a few prototypes of very different dialogue presentations that had the dialogue box centred between speaking characters, and an idea for a speech-bubble style presentation, but the ideas needed more work and it wasn't a high-priority issue.
- The fades at the start are definitely too much yeah. They should be quicker in general, especially with how many of them there are but that was something that slipped through the net I guess. I'd like to find some other transition styles for future projects, or at least tweak the fades to be quicker.
- The music is actually something I want to re-record later! My mic setup this time wasn't ideal, so I'm not too happy with the sound of the guitar and the sound quality overall. I like the results but I feel like it could sound much clearer.
- Clarent is indeed a good man. I just hope he's happy lol
- The ending is (unfortunately) one of the clearer signs that I wanted to get the game finished and cut a few corners on the way. This remake was a sort of way for me to shake off the rust of being away from game dev, music production, and writing for so long, so I made the choice early on to be open to rushing some aspects here and there. Sort of a "finished is better than perfect" mindset. I had more portraits and illustrations planned but a lot of them were cut because the project was already taking a lot longer than planned, but I learned a lot of invaluable stuff that I can use to make future projects quicker and better.