Haven't finished all the ally conversations yet but I'm impressed! This might come off as a little negative, but know that overall I'm super excited for where you're going to take this. I'm especially interested in the nether/aether/abyssal routes.
I'm impressed at the variety offered by your combat system. I wanted to play a mana blade wielder, but I feel like at the start that's not the best choice. The skills with no mana cost are so much better.
I got a build going with mana blade, but it feels like I'm just restoring mana with the siphon then draining small amounts of HP with the nether ability. I had more success going with greatsword. I dunno, maybe I'm not smart enough.
I respecced many times, and noticed that you can spec into something, get a trait that requires say 5 insight and then respec your stats out of insight and still keep the trait. I'm not sure if that is intentional or not. I also wish I could change my attunements after the fact too, but I think it's a consequence of having so many choices that I want to try different things.
That being said, I didn't really find the choices I had very fun. I think it's the way the mana system works. I felt like I wanted to have buffs up, but even with the +5 mana to have max 10 mp, I still felt like I spent more time trying to siphon mana back to use my abilities than using the ones I wanted to use. I specced as much as I could into mana regen and still was at a net negative because of buffs, but when I deactivated the buffs my damage and survivability went down quite a bit.
The way buffs work is strange as well. It doesn't feel good to go into a fight at full mana and then see it drop down to almost nothing after your buffs activate. Maybe try making it so your buffs work like path of exile and reserve some of your maximum HP or MP? Or even so that reduce one stat to buff another? Like -X% to damage but +X% to defense or something, because seeing a very limited resource get drained to nothing to have to build it back up every battle is tedious.
When it comes to writing, it gets a little too long for my tastes in some spots. I feel like you make a good point then continue to reiterate it in several different forms, which is flowery and eloquent in some places, but other times it absolutely destroys the pacing.
A good example is right before the showdown with Mara. I think the conversation begins and there's an implication that you are short on time, but towards the end of the conversation the patriarch says something akin to the timeframe not being in minutes and seconds.
I feel like that statement ought to be moved to the beginning of the conversation, because I was legitimately confused as to why he would draw attention to time being short, then start talking about philosophy.
Also, I did the forest arch before going to the church in Badon, which confused me greatly, since towards the end they start mentioning Astralogia and I thought...the what now? Maybe make it required to go to the church in Badon before letting the player escort Ina to the knights camp.
The church scene and the talk with Svatlibor (I think I spelled that right) were both high points for me though. The temple at the beginning was also quite good, but before that the pacing was very strange.
I'm not sure how to explain it...I guess the best thing I can think of is it feels like the game has 3 separate tutorials...almost false starts. As I was playing, after fighting the boars I thought, okay basic tutorial done. We've introduced the basic cast of characters, Sam, the Dryad (I can't even remember her name at this point), and you. We've done some easy, low stakes fights...now we can get to the meatier stuff.
Then you teleport to the temple and fight the shadow things...okay...structurally speaking, these fights are identical to the boar fights. They're less complex even, because now you don't have a partner, so in terms of teaching the player, this bit doesn't teach anything.
So I thought...okay now the basic tutorial is done right? You get the big fight with the abomination, which was pretty neat and are introduced to Metatron, Ashley, Sarah, and you. So here it feels like you could have lead with either one of these as an introduction. They feel like two different games almost, they're that distinct in tone.
Then you reconvene with Sam and the Dryad and the Dryad just leaves? At this point it feels like you just added her in to have someone there to heal the player for the intro battles.
Then you go to your house and get ready to go adventuring. When you get to camp and then you get the campsite menu. And suddenly it's okay so now this is how the game really is? Why wait so long before introducing the core part of the game: The campsite?
I'm not sure if you're experimenting or if you were unsure at the start, but I feel like you could make the intro much better if you introduced the camp system BEFORE you get to the temple so it sets a bar for how the game actually plays. I mean, the basic structure is go out adventuring, if you die you go back to camp and if you don't you continue to progress. If you introduce it at the very beginning, then you don't really even need the dryad, though I'm sure she'll come back eventually, but at this point to me, she doesn't feel like a real character yet. You meet her by chance, don't learn much of her intentions, then she leaves.
Anyways, I was only planning on pointing out the Badon thing before Ina escort, but I guess I had a lot more to say after I thought about it. Sorry for the wall of text!