Downloaded. Looks interesting. I'll let you know my thoughts.

I just finished my playthrough. I must begin by saying that I really enjoyed this demo and I think this game shows a ton of promise. I very much desire to see more and I urge you to continue. I beg of you to continue, even.

I was extremely impressed by the atmosphere and pace of this game. It reminded me a lot of Dark Souls, and it would not surprise me at all if you said that was one of your main influences. The premise, dismal atmosphere, mysterious nature of the world, and the Solar Pilgrims/Zealots among other things: all were extremely reminiscent of Dark Souls, and being a huge fan of that game and series, this is not a downside to me by any means.

I really enjoyed the leveling system. It was sweet how it allowed for slight customization. Giving the player a choice of which skills to learn is an interesting system, as well, and shows promise. I thought that the battles were very well balanced, and the pace at which you leveled was very consistent. I constantly felt like I was getting stronger and I loved the feeling. The summoning system was pretty cool, too. I also liked the idea of having an NPC who follows you around and sells you items.

The music was amazing and impressed me a lot. It fit the atmosphere well. Great choice, there.

However, that being said, there are definitely improvements that could made. The number one issue I had with this game is the "running" system. Frankly, it's broken and pointless. I'm not sure if this is what was intended, but it only allowed for me to run at short, one second bursts, and most of the time I was forced to walk at the painfully slow speed. I'm honestly not sure why you have this system in place when you can simply allow the player to run by default, which would make the game a number of times more enjoyable. There's no reason to ever walk slow. Did you want to make the game longer? If so, forcing the player to walk slowly is a shallow method of accomplishing this. As well, sometimes when running the teleport events wouldn't trigger for whatever reason. This is another reason to simply get rid of the system.

My other problem is that the areas didn't seem to connect to each other at all. I did not like how I exited a cavern at the base of a mountain, and upon leaving the map I'm instantly teleported to a dense forest that uses an entirely different art style and tileset, whilst facing a different direction. It felt like, perhaps, this was supposed to be a few hours later, after some uneventful traveling or something. That's fine, but maybe you could put a world map into the game to simulate this instead? It was rather jarring how quickly the location changed.

Finally, I did not like how slowly the title screen took to load. I would have preferred if the text faded in at least twice as fast. I'm probably just accustomed to the default title screen, which is quick and to the point.

However, this game definitely shows a lot of promise and is highly original, at least in the RPG Maker scene. I enjoyed playing very much. I ended the game at level 8, if that helps you at all. :-)

Hiatus, huh?

Ah, I see. I've come across the same problem with my own project. I've had to rebalance stats completely twice which involves a lot of play testing on my part (especially because my game allows for certain dungeons to be completed in any order which means I have to play the game while complete all the dungeons in every possible order). I've just been working on my game for too long to give up and, besides that, working on it is rarely a chore.

I can't say I'm not a bit disappointed because I thought this project had a lot of potential, but I look forward to your future projects.