HOUSEKEEPING'S PROFILE

-Have the main character's sprite be set to blank so that she doesn't pop up for half a second when you start a new game; there might also be an option to begin as transparent in the system tab of the database (not sure if this is in XP).

-Check out text commands; you can better sync the dialogue and pictures in the opening. I'm not sure where XP has these, but there's likely a question mark icon or something similar when entering dialogue. You can just hover your mouse over the box and it'll come up in a pop-up on VX Ace, but I think that's a newer feature.

-There are some confusing pronouns in the opening text. I'm not sure why you refer to Severin as "they." I realize that this is a genderless term, but since the premise is that you've flipped traditional gender roles, I would assume she would still just be referred to as a "she." Incorporating "they" makes me assume that she's somewhere in between male and female, which is doubly confusing since you're establishing the premise there.

-Brown trees in Northpass Forest have a priority issue; I'm talking about the Northpass Forest east of Mirstone.

-I think I didn't get any copper from the rat quest in the inn.

-Actually, a good quality of life improvement would be to pop open a dialogue box after each finished quest and outright stating your rewards, as I wasn't sure what I gained a lot of the time. You do this sometimes, but it would be cool if this were consistent.

-You can walk on the hospital roof in Geadal if you approach from the top right.

-Throw weapon is a pretty useless skill, but I guess that's a potential characterization? If Severin's story arc is supposed to be from a naive princess to a hero, then it would make sense to give him a useless starting skill, but Severin still felt a bit naive by the end of the game. The story didn't focus on developing her other than revealing her sexuality/reason for running at the end of the game, so I'm not sure that having this skill is an effective form of characterization.

-The fire elemental is kind of a difficulty chokepoint, so it probably shouldn't come after lengthy dialogue. Too, I found that I won that fight through dumb luck; the elemental happened to miss a couple of times.

-The 50 gold healing pots are pretty useless. They were healing for about the same damage as the fire elemental was hitting me for, and the game isn't dungeon-based, so you can generally use inns to heal on the field.

-"Stunning" truncated in the Thorntwist Vale story dialogue

-For some reason I can't go into the temple to visit the Stygian priestess after completing the quest from the person who gives me a self-portrait; I was able to get in before that, though. I might have sequence broke by going to Sycamore a little early. I think that there might be a boss fight with an ice elemental that I missed there since I saw an ice elemental sprite with Pretentious later in the game.

-Some of the fadeins seem pretty slow--going up to the merchants in Sycamore, for example.

-Aloe seems to vanish in the middle of the chief's house in sycamore when she leaves; she also shows up in the workshop before you talk to her in the chief's house.

-At level 9 my stats were cranked way the fuck out? I had max health and mp, for instance. I also got there very quickly from fighting all the Tarlings as I searched everything in that cabin.

-I got four surprisingly effective stone maces from the earth elemental; I also got four of the dodging accessories and four of the royal armors (not sure where I got these at all).

-The Pretentious fight is an endless loop if you beat him, which was easy because of the weird level cap stat boost.

-It wouldn't let me go back and rescue the dragon from Northpass Forest as soon as I had the keys. The door opened when I went back after beating Pretentious, though. I get having the ability to save anywhere is nice for the ending choice, so I understand why you would withhold that reward, but then the 1,000 coins you get seems totally unnecessary since you've beaten the game at that point (unless I'm missing something).

-You can't interact with Karaktor's sprite until you beat Ratpun.

-Severin's battle sprite was missing for a good chunk of the game.

-A few of the quests didn't grey out after I beat them; I also couldn't figure out how to complete the quest where the Stygian asks for a gift; that could just be missing something, though.

-The bars from the Pretenious fight stay on you if you get into other battles.

-A lot of the art is really gorgeous. The character portraits in particular are great. I especially liked Mistletoe's design. I also thought the unique dialogue boxes both looked great and were a touch that made characters feel a bit more special. Any time you used picture cut scenes, such as the lore section with Pretentious, looked great. The battle sprites are also top notch.

-Conversely, some of the sprites and mapping could have looked better. I felt that the sprites clashed a bit with the tiles because of the lack of shading on the sprites vs. the textured look of most of the tiles, and the sprites were very small on the screen. These are issues that I've had problems with in the past; if you've played (or just looked at the screens of) The Heart Pumps Clay, I did a similar thing, and the conclusion I came to is that it's better to keep a consistent style. I would have loved to see you embrace the cartoony look of your battle sprite/character portrait work throughout all aspects of the game's art. Also, sometimes, the tiles don't read super well. For instance, the doors in Sycamore didn't read as doors to me.

-There were some pretty awesome mapping locations, though. I loved the way the first couple of maps in the trial in bizarro Northpass looked. REALLY cool atmosphere all around there, with the backwards samples in the music and the broken up text/portraits. I also really loved the look of Apostrophe's (don't remember where the apostrophe was in that) realm. That looked GREAT.

-The music was well-chosen; it matched the whimsical feel of the story and the fantastical setting.

-The sound effects were generally a bit low in the mix, though. That made a lot of the weight of the actions feel diminished. This could have been intentional, but this was especially the case with the standard attack in combat. I would have liked to hear more impact in that sound effect, but if you were intentionally deflating that, then that's fine.

-I liked how each area felt unique, not just within the game's own world, but they felt unique in general. I liked how every new area was a surprise.

-Making the game primarily occur in towns was a cool design decision, and the quest system works well with that. So does the low level cap. One thing you might consider doing is removing xp from random encounters. I understand the need to have extra copper if people spend it on useless stuff, but I think if you had experience rewards from quests (which I think you do, but I didn't check), then you can have the player reach the level cap by simply doing every quest, and this would further put the focus on questing. No biggie either way.

-Many of the puzzles and quests were a bit uninspired--the first challenge, for instance. I would have liked to see a bit more thought put into their design. The general rule of thumb is that they were easy, so they were never distracting, but they weren't super engaging. I think the quests worked the best when they were dialogue-focused.

-I like that the best armor in the game is available early on. I like when a game gives you lots of options with currency. You might look into an SNES game called Lennus 2 that does something like this. In it, there's a very large city that has close to the best equipment in the game early on, and the game is structured so that the city is a hub that you hang around for a while. You have to get a translation patch for it, but it's a very interesting RPG--weird mechanics, cool art style, weird music, neat atmosphere all around. For your game, though, I found the cost to be a bit too prohibitive given the small quest rewards. It also required a bit of backtracking to get (though, like I mentioned, I somehow ended up with four of them).

-The ending really reminded me of the ending to a Gameboy rpg called Great Greed, where you can marry whoever you want. This includes one same-sex marriage (maybe more; haven't played that since I was a kid). Can't really recommend that game that much, though; it is on Gameboy, after all.

-Some of the characters were really charming, especially Amaury. Her dialogue was super fun. Conversely, I felt like most of the characters didn't have enough onscreen time to leave much of an impression or showcase a clear character arc. I was also a bit disappointed in Severin; she really felt the same as a character from beginning to end, and she's who we spend the most time with.

-I also felt that Amaury got shortchanged a bit towards the end. There's a pretty big gap between the last time you see her and when she makes her appearance in the final battle (unless she appeared in that Stygian Temple that I couldn't get into). I would have liked her presence to be more consistent considering her importance in the story.

-I think the writing excels in small dialogue moments where you're not constrained by the plot. Smashing up the tavern, seeing the bizarre second version of the play in the Stygian town, conversations with talking furniture--these were all things that were really enjoyable.

-Conversely, I found the game suffered a bit in terms of plot progression and adhering to a central theme. The final boss was really a "that came out of nowhere" moment for me, but I think that might have been because of cuts that you made so that you would finish on time (and, again, I probably missed a scene in the Stygian temple). However, you could have more prepared the audience for the antagonist by underscoring his misdeeds. For instance, you tell us that the elementals are up to no good, but you don't really show them doing anything mischievous or show the results of their mischief. A cliche example would be giving the "big bad" gravitas by showing a city that they had destroyed. Beyond the game's lore and Pretentious chopping down Oak (which is good but happens RIGHT before you fight Pretentious, so that line of tension ends up being super short), it's hard to see Pretentious has having a lot of gravitas.

-With regard to the theme, the game is operating mostly based on a "what if" scenario where gender roles are reversed. This mainly shows off some absurdities of traditional gender roles (Karaktor being the quintessential example). Pretentious being the masculine equivalent of the temptress was nice, too, as the lore of the world itself was built into that overarching theme. However, how do mages really fit into that? This is a major plot point with Amaury, and it's important in the lore; you see several mages--the librarian, the fountain mage (who hates her fucking job, haha), the husband of the leader of the smog town (blanking on names, sorry!). This was a cool thing, but I don't see how it fits into the overarching theme. I kind of feel like you might have two separate ideas here that you've melded into one game, but I can see their edges grinding together a bit, if that makes sense. I felt like there was more heart in Amaury's story, so I wonder if you were constrained a bit by the gender-swapping rather than inspired by it. Though, I do think that Pretentious was an inspired villain in terms of background (just needed some more onscreen oomph).

-Overall, though, I do want to underscore that I enjoyed myself, especially with small moments--seeing the art for the buff ass rats or for the bird with a knife, for example. I think that the larger arc has good moments, such as Pretenious's lore before the Styigan town and basically all of Amaury's scenes, but Severin needed more attention and the plot felt rushed once you get to Sycamore. Anyway, I wrote way too much. I hope this is helpful!