SorceressKyrsty,

I have played your 2.2 demo twice already which took me about 30 minutes each. Keeping in mind, that I haven't really have a chance to read the comments (sorry if I repeat something has already mentioned) or your blog for this game and I have only played a couple of hours of FF VII when it came out for PS (I have never played FF VIII, FF IX nor any RE), here is my feedback, mostly observations and comments as I played along, regarding the demo:

For those playing the demo: WARNING, CONTAINS SPOILERS!

- Did you actually implement the choice of music in this demo? I supposedly choose FF VII for the first playthrough and FF VII for the second one. I didn't feel the difference, but maybe it's just me, probably being familiar with some FF VII music and having heard many FF rips on many RPGs, that all others probably not resonate with me as related to that series of games.
- It would be nice if you if you could put a little arrow below the dialog when you want the player to press enter to move the text forward
- The speed of the text showing up for the dialog at the beginning of the game appears and changes to quickly. I suggest you either have the player press enter to go from one part of the dialog to the next or slow it down, so that players who might be slow readers might actually have a chance to read it.
- What was your intention was to include the screenshot (a 3D says Game Online) at the middle of the initial scene? It seemed to me a bit out of place.
- After the first fight and my party was left by itself, I checked on the bodies that mostly lay around. Searching the leftmost girl (or woman) and infantry (standing to the left of her), gave me unlimited Energy Drinks. I found some quirks depending which way I was facing when doing action. For the girl, if you did it from the right, her sprite morphed into one of the fallen infantry guys (with blue hair); from top, her sprite disappeared altogether;
from left, it actually stayed the same; from bottom, it morphed into something that had a grey pyramid base with a short white stick connected to some round hollow golden circle that has a smaller golden circle in it, right on top. If you did it with the standing infantry guy, he turned to face you (he stayed in place if you did it from below, obviously!).
- In testing the menu, you had no Config options.
- Also, it would be nice to have a tutorial right after the first fight regarding Materia and Magic. Having access to Magic is very useful (although, probably not necessary) to beat the boss at the end of the demo.
- I did notice the nice detail of using of multiple shadows that change as you are moving with relation to light sources, which is probably the first time I have seen it in a RM game.
- It would be nice if you had some arrows pointing where exit points to the next screen are. First and second screen, can you imagine I couldn't quite remember where they were? That was because they were not in the expected places.
- In the second screen, I could get as many Iron Bangles from a box as well as the nearby wall which has 01 written on it.
- I found it strange under Equip option that you had to move over from Weapon, down a couple of lines with no information whatsoever to reach the Arm. line to equip the Iron Bangle. Will you enable these lines to equip something in future demos?
- I found enemies a bit slow since you can get a couple of turns with Zane and one with the other characters, before they it is their turn to attack. Same thing with the boss.
- I found if you used the cellphone to rearrange your party members' order, in battle the sprites are in the right order, but the status box keeps the characters in the original order. This could be somewhat confusing for players.
- I didn't understand why and what it meant that after a character took his turn his time bar would start red to later become yellow, although sometimes it remained red.
- In the third screen, there are a couple of barrels to the right, one in front of another. I found that you can actually walk into the one in the front.

- In the part of the inverted "T" in which you can walk towards Biggs to talk to him, there a couple of graphical artifacts at some points that block part of the face of the sprite of your party leader as well as Biggs: there is the black wire that goes from when you enter the screen to just before the intersection, restarts at the intersect past Biggs; this also happens when there is a gray horizontal tube of the railing. How Biggs looks shows clearly the problem. It is an issue of putting these elements in the background or making sure that the sprites are in the foreground.
- I found the boss the animation of the laser attack more reminiscent of a thunderstorm. I found that except for casting Bolt which did damage comparable to Kumo's melee attack, all other Magic attacks (I tried did not more damage than any regular attack of the other characters. I just did the melee attacks for them unless needing to heal or defend, because there was a chance of getting a critical hit.
- I probably had about 3 min to spare at the end.
- It is good that you mention the demo has ended and that you bothered to put that ending credits with screenshots. I can tell you it's awkward when the demo just ends and you get taken to the title menu.
- I am happy to say that I found no game-breaking bugs in the demo. Also, a couple of health bars I found didn't have the issue mentioned earlier with the Energy Drink and Iron Bangle.
- This whole demo kind of reminded me of the mission at the beginning of FF VII.

It's seems you have your work cut out for you. I now understand why you had to cut down your ambitions for the game (a matter of quality vs. quantity). Since I just play the games but don't make I'm sorry I can help you with the particular issues you are facing. Perhaps you can get some help from some other RMN members if you post in the forums. I guess using somebody else's scripts puts you at the mercy of what they did, without the understand of how they work. Good luck on getting your project forward!