Comments/Questions:
- I like that summons stick with the party and level-up.
- There are a lot of items, and I do like that I can craft them in the field, but it's a little underwhelming when some of the items that I have access to (at least early on) basically all do the same thing - bat wings and rat meat have the same effect, and other items only offer tiny changes in outcome. I know the game is working with small numbers, but having options for +3 HP/MP vs +4 HP/MP vs +5 HP/MP feels like bloat, not opportunity. Most of the items so far also feel pretty standard; HP/MP regen, stat boosts.
- Similarly, there's a decent spread of magic spells, but I'm entirely sure if there's any benefit yet to using one over another. Some enemies are maybe weaker to certain elements?
- It would be nice to have a division in the inventory for ingredients, battle items, and misc items. That way I'm not scrolling through a whole list of fish and monster parts looking for spellbooks to use or what healing items I have left.
- Does the agility stat have any effect at this point in the game? For all of my battles, my characters went first, and then the monsters.
- Where do I find more gold? I'd like to buy some new abilities, recipes, and supplies.
- Enemy scaling could use some work. Random encounters so easy as to be an annoyance, while bosses suddenly spike in HP and damage capabilities, requiring a dozen turns and multiple items. Something in-between would be nice, as a challenge and signpost of increasing difficulty.
- Quests could also use some work. Right now most of them are plain and repetitive: running back and forth between two people, fighting the same basic monster half a dozen times, using the same spell over and over again in the same room.
- I think there's too much writing, in multiple senses. Since this is a visual game, you don't need to write any non-dialogue text, especially during conversations. Either convert it to dialogue, show it with the little speech bubbles, or cut it. And to the extent that dialogue shows the personality of a person, I think you could cut a lot of that too and still get the vibes across. You establish the characters as certain tropes/archetypes early on, there's no need to overdo it. And honestly, since the MC is pretty basic self-insert, I think you'd be fine to make him essentially a silent protagonist. Less talking, quicker cutscenes, and the sooner the player can get to the crafting and battling.