Strange Journey and longtime SMT/EO fan here. Got to end of demo after beating both Utsuho and the Mask of Hope stealer, maybe a couple hours at most.
How you managed to have it all only 15 MiB decompressed is beyond me, though considering your maps are only like 4 KiB at most...
- Left/right strafing and walking backwards (i.e. Strange Journey and EO's map movement style) is my #1 request to be added by far. Movement is extremely annoying otherwise even when set to Fast
- Being able to set battle effects to instant is an absolute godsend
- The menu navigation is a tad clunky. Switching active/reserve requires you to put the active character in reserve and then switch in the reserve member, you can only view the skill descriptions of active members (important for fusion and inheritance), can't use L/R in order to switch between characters' status pages, etc.
- SMT V's skill transfer and being able to transfer affinities onto Sumireko is good, saves the massive pain that was chain fusing. I'm not sure about being able to transfer affinities between demons though; it feels like it might cause them to lose their individuality
- Hijack mechanic is great imo and much better than negotiating, especially since you can reference spellcards. It's fairly good since you can either lower their HP for easy patterns or just immediately hijack for the high risk, high reward. I personally don't think much should be changed regarding it
- SP system is fine
- I personally think the game is easy, but for beginners maybe a Classic vs. Casual mode like recent EO games and Strange Journey Redux, where in Casual you don't have the harsh level drop from dying and the battle doesn't end if the protagonist falls but there are still demon allies alive
- "Story" is fine, good choice picking Sumireko since she has a gun (I get Yume Nikki vibes whenever I save lol)
- Yellow battery sucking tiles are much more taxing on players than the black EMP tiles or the purple poison tiles by a longshot
- Both bosses got smoked first try without much level grinding or taking advantage of affinity inheritance. Utsuho might have just been bad RNG on her end from being chain-Confused/Blinded, but Koishi uselessly kept spamming Peace of Mind and healing for 0 HP despite no buffs being present
- During AI autobattle, my Koishi managed to get -170/47 MP against Boss Utsuho
- You are evil for putting four-choice blind unidirectional teleporter maps already in the second stratum
- Tojiko is going to kill everyone who plays this game at least once
- Party member Utsuho being able to kill all three of her teammates with Red Sun is glorious
- Overall game is a blast to play as an SMT/EO fan
- If PC-98 Alice is neither playable nor a superboss I will cry
tl;dr, feels like a great Touhou version of SMT/EO/Strange Journey, core systems are fine, needs a few QoL changes for the menu and movement