Hi AnonymousRPGDeveloper,
To say from the start, this is a very good RPG! Strong submission!
At the main menu screen, I felt a bit weird greeted with a lo-fi hip-hop beats, because I played lots of jRPGs. But after a while, it became normal, so no problem. The closest thing to existing media from what I can tell is Samurai Champloo. Did you happen to get inspiration from it? It is a bit nitpicky from me.. but currently the game settings and Characters exhibit traditional Japanese samurai. I don't see any character that fit with the lo-fi beats. Perhaps, there will be a new character (some character that is defying or outside of the traditional Japanese culture in the game) that fit exactly with theme in the next part of the game. In that case, introducing that character in the demo is a must.
Making enemies visible outside of battle do eliminate random encounters that you typically see in older RPGs, however the battles are mostly unavoidable. But the battle is easy to learn and I didn't feel them as hassles, yet. It would be better if there's progression for Kira? (Kiro?) So that it would make the battles more meaningful and it serves well narratively. Just having 1 or 2 tech unlocks for Kiro would be great. Currently every battle doesn't give you anything except occasional healing items and DNA samples. Speaking of DNA sample, why would human enemies also drop them? 🤔
I didn't really understand how you obtain beats to perform the techniques. I must have clicked on too fast to read all the tutorials.
Sprites, characters and the color palette is good! A minor thing that bug is Kiro being a disciple wearing a big field hat feels kinda disrespectful for me.
It took me around 45min to play the whole game. I feel the pacing is a little bit slow for a lot of the game. But I think the slow pacing really put a contrast to the ending. It was a really satisfying ending! Great job on the scenario staging!
Just my 2 cents.. if you want to demo the game, it would be better if the scene is mostly exciting. So I would shorten the first part with Kiro's intro up to the burning house. Not cutting it out entirely, just make the path towards a bit shorter and less enemy battles.
The game is quite polished for still being in early demo. I didn't find any difficulty in navigating all the UI and everything is readable and responsive. Great job!
This is a very strong submission and have the potential to be a great RPG! I hope you will continue on making it and good luck!