I just started playing the game and I'm really enjoying it so far. I have a few small critiques in terms of event structure, sound, etc:
1) Transferring between maps during the introductory events is too fast and jarring. To make it more cinematic and professional, you want to do a fade-out before the transfer map and a fade-in afterwards. Make sure the "knock-knock" noise when transferring maps is removed.
2) I recommend using free for commercial music/sound effects from YouFulca https://wingless-seraph.net/en/ and the Makai Symphony https://makai-symphony.com/9-2/
3) If you're going to be replacing the RTP tilesets with something better, I'd recommend FSM tilesets or those from Kokoro Reflections https://kokororeflections.com/. If you don't have the budget for tilesets, you can customize the existing tilesets to make them more unique using various free textures for commercial use and GIMP: https://freestocktextures.com/
4) One more suggestion? During the intro crawl about the Marianas Trench, instead of scrolling text with the map scrolling down (which makes it a little unsightly while reading), perhaps displaying the text as pictures while the map is scrolling down would be better? In other words, take the text from the scrolling text and cut it up into chunks within pictures, do a fade-out/fade-in per text chunk with a blank text message before the fade-out, so that the player can read as per their own speed as the map is scrolling, and I think those static text pictures would work better for the introductory scene.
To be brutally honest, I think your game is already something pretty special. I'll be playing it after work when I can (and not working on my own game). I really think once your game has its new soundtrack, more customized tilesets and the eventing structure is a bit more cinematic, you'll have something really nice here. Oh, and while it *is* expensive, there's a fantastic character generator tool in a pretty great style for RPG Maker MV/MZ that I'm thinking of getting for myself where you can create your own field and battle character that's constantly being updated. https://robertpinero.itch.io/8dchars
You got this!
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Hey thanks for giving it a shot and your kind words. Funny enough one of the songs I've already picked out is YouFulca. I only need 1 or 2 more tracks picked out for the new soundtrack to be done.
I'll def look into getting rid of that knock noise on map transfer, to be honest I didn't notice it, it could be that after hundreds of hours my brain just stopped noticing lol.
I searched high and low for a better character generator tool, I'll definitly check out what you posted when I get out of work!
Thanks again for the feedback!