This is the 12th game I've seen with the same starting title screen, the second one I've played that goes for a Game Boy look (in some scenes) and the millionth game I've see steal the plot of Stardew Valley.
There are some grammar and spelling issues, but the font is easy to read. Where's the music? When you start it's dead silent. Also why no sound effects or item graphic popups when you uncover hidden items and gold? You're really missing out on a huge aspect of game design here.
The game's low res sprite sheets and tile sets are nice.
The game lacks originality, it's basically just taking the story and plot of a few other games and puts them all in the same world. Some people will like this because it plays on nostalgia, but it's not very marketable.
The credit roll at the not-so-beginning of the game feels very much like the opening to a movie from the 80s. It's a little out of place.
It's weird that you enter the cathedral from the bottom but start at the top. (I know other games do this too, but I still think it's weird.)
It's really bad how when you take damage your HP Bars never go down. It gives the appearance that you're always at full HP. So you basically just have to memorize your party members Max HP at all times. The battle system is slow and boring. Like many others, a real lack of skill variety in both the enemies and actors, many skills lack an animation entirely and the ones that have an animation use the same default ones over and over. The enemies have more HP than they should and the whole thing becomes a slog. I'm not impressed, but I like the enemy battle sprites. Once you progress a bit further and find some TMs you start to get a decent variety of spells and abilities.
Why do you feel the need to have your enemies heal? It's a bad idea in general. Let the player feel strong and kill many enemies. Instead of spending 15 minutes in a battle with the first cleric group they encounter. Frustrating. That's what this is. (I picked the warrior and didn't buy any gear for this first fight). ((I went back to town to see if I could get something with the money I made in the first fight and to my surprise...))
You failed to balance the game in so many ways. The shop keepers sell items that cost 0. Not just any items, but entire sets of items. This was clearly a lack of actually playtesting your own game. It looks like I can just get the best gear for free, so why wouldn't I? The charged bolt skill takes forever to deal with. You have to see "x casts Charged Bolt! Drifty took no damage!" like 5 times each time they use it, and some enemies spam it. So you just end up waiting around in combat for text to display. Very boring. It's odd that skeletons cast heal magic on themselves and be healed by it. Shouldn't healing damage the undead? I could go on and on but I think that if you would have play-tested a bit more you would have found most of these issues for yourself.
I found this entry nostalgically pleasing, but ultimately uninspiring. It's messy and all over the place. You should pick one game to emulate and do it well, instead of picking several classics and messing the execution up on all of them.
It's evident that you've put a lot of work into this project, but I think that you've messed up with scoping the project. Narrow your overall design plans down into something more cohesive and simple. It's clear you ran out of time and have submitted an unfinished mess. I think you have a good idea, but failed to execute in a meaningful way.
Don't give up and keep working on your craft. I hope that you've managed to improve your skill throughout this whole process and I suspect that you have. Keep on going and remember to allocate time in the next project for playtesting. If you keep your head up and learn from your mistakes you'll do just fine in the future.
Thanks for submitting a game to the jam and I hope to see an improvement on your next entry whenever or whatever that is.