So I've got some notes about stuff I encountered when playing through the alpha. They're listed not in any particular order of importance, just in order of when I encountered it/thought of it.
- The Item purchase screen (like in a shop) doesn't indicate what stat is improved or degraded by a piece of equipment, it simply shows a "+4" or "-9", with the player having no way of knowing what it's good for.
- In the battle UI, characters' max HP/MP is not displayed, only their current HP/MP. This can make it difficult to know which restorative item to use, since a player won't know how much HP/MP their character has exactly lost, and they may end up wasting a powerful item to restore a small amount of health/might.
- Are the equipment items you can buy restricted to certain classes? There's not any indicator on the item screens (either in the inventory or in a shop's buy screen) as to what item is for what class. Could be a problem when a new player saves up and buys an item for a character they haven't added to their party yet.
- Backing out of equipment/skill/status screen takes the player back to the top menu, when it would probably be better to have it take them back to the previous character select screen.
- The Heal spell you get probably should have some sort of indication as to how much HP it restores so the player will have a better judge as to when to use it.
- Theore's Dual Attack animation is the same as the Mage class' magic casting animation. Probably an oversight, since presumably Theore is attacking with axe(s?)
- When battling in Slime Cavern, the battle screen background is just the top-down view of the cavern (complete with sprites). Probably another oversight, or maybe the content for that isn't finished yet.
- As a suggestion, perhaps Guard could be used to let party members protect others? Since Guard only mitigates damage, instead of completely block it, this would allow the player to have a chance at restoring that character's HP if it's extremely low and that character would be attacked before they have a chance to use a healing item.
That's all I got. Looks good so far though; interested to see how it goes from here.