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Regarding battle backgrounds, a solid black background would work as a placeholder given the asset pack you used. It’s a small effort that would have gone a long way to keep the player focused on the battle itself, rather than be distracted by the black boxes.

As for the SV battler head idea, I just want to emphasize that that’s just an alternative when there’s some reason for not showing a face. Faces are generally better because they can be more expressive. In our game, the reason we don’t add faces to dialog boxes (during VN segments) is because we already have busts and didn’t want to divide the player’s attention. There could be other reasons for not adding faces, including if you just haven’t made them yet. And there are other alternatives you could do to help identify the speaker, like a tail from the dialog box to the character (may require a plugin). Just giving you some options because the more tools you have in your toolbox, the better you can adapt to whatever challenges or limitations you have in your next game.

Following up on my last comment, I got to play it by copying the game files into an empty RPG Maker MV project. With this method, I was able to deploy the game and run the deployed version. Let me know if you need help!

I understand you started pretty late into the jam, so it's hard to give feedback. It's an interesting premise, and it had the beginnings of a promising story. I could see it developing into a really compelling mystery. Your writing style kept me invested. I also respect the high fantasy UI aesthetic and the BG3 references. I'd have liked it if you continued updating past the deadline, entered this as a late submission, or both, at least to flesh out that first story or give us a second story for comparison.

I hope this experience doesn't discourage you from making more games and joining more jams. Learn by doing!

I'm impressed with the custom art, but I want to share my perspective as a writer. Based just on this game, I could tell you have a passion for writing. Not in the sense of being a prolific writer necessarily but rather in that you invest a good amount of effort into what you write. For example, you seem to enjoy developing dramatic dialogues, kind of like a play. There's setup, tension, and payoff. In contrast, if you just saw writing as nothing more than grease to move the player from one battle to the next (or one map to the next), it'd be easy to phone it in.

My suggestions:

Proofread, proofread, proofread. And have others proofread, too. A typo here and there won't be fatal, but the more you catch, the better the polish. You may even find ways to phrase things better on the second, third, fourth, and subsequent reads. My game was also text-heavy, so I wrote out the scenes in a separate document before copying them over to RPG Maker. The flexibility of a separate document for writing is absolutely worth the initial effort of copying the text over. However, even after copying, you'll still need to proofread it several more times in-engine. For example, I noticed a few places in your game where the text would get cut off by the window. I had a plugin that automatically does word wrapping, but even then I had to look for messages that would go beyond the number of lines in a single dialog box. In my opinion, no matter the medium of the art, the details matter at least as much as the big picture.

At times (especially at the beginning) it was difficult to tell who was who. I understand that this is a sequel, so those who have played your previous game may not have the same problem, but I think even returning players would appreciate a quick refresher. I'm not saying you need to give us a full bio for each character. At a minimum, I'd like to be able to put a face to the name. If you don't want to literally add a face in the dialog box, I'll suggest to you something we did for our game. With the original version of our game, people complained it was hard to tell who was talking. So we added little icons (of the SV battle sprite heads) next to the speaker's name in the dialog box. All you have to do is add the icons to the IconSet sheet and then type in the text code \I[n] (where n is the index of the icon on the sheet) next to the name in the dialog box. I did this for every dialog box spoken by one of the four main characters. It's a little tedious, but I used AutoHotkey to speed up the process. And I think it paid off pretty well! It's a small detail that goes a long way to remove an obstacle that might keep a player from appreciating your writing.

Keep up the good work!

Thanks for playing, and we appreciate the constructive feedback!

In my opinion, the walking and text speeds work well in the game’s context. And I personally like it better that the hooded figure was not explicitly revealed. These are intentional design decisions that I respect and that didn’t interfere with my enjoyment of the game (rather, I’d say they made me appreciate the game even more).

I recognize different players can think differently, so I’m not saying my opinion should be given any more weight. Just wanted to share my two cents so the developer doesn’t overcorrect in one direction or another.

This one really blew me away! As the others have said, the aesthetic is immaculate. You weaved together the assets into a well-polished package.

I also appreciate a lot of the details you put in there. The CRT filter, the FF-inspired battle screen, the slow fadeout/fadein to mimic NES games, the elaborate movement of all the soldiers in that first story to emphasize the scale of the battle—just to name a few! I especially enjoyed the character writing. I'd be interested if you continue the story in the future, or at least use the same characters or setting.

I was floored by all the custom art, from character sprites, to tilesets, to enemies! And I really respect the approach you took with telling three wildly different stories while weaving a common theme throughout. You deserve a lot more comments and reviews for the effort you put into this!

Hey, I wanted to give this game a try, but I wasn't able to run it. Nothing seems to happen when I open the game.exe file. I'm on Windows 11. Also tried running as administrator and in compatibility mode for Windows 7.