LAMASQUERADE'S PROFILE

1) Play time: 3 hours, 4 minutes.

2) Level 7/Level 7

3) I honestly have to agree with Noel_Kreiss. The difficulty seemed about right, barring two points in the game. At the very beginning, if you happen to wander onto the beach, there is an encounter with 2 of the sea horses + 2 goblins that will absolutely pwn you. I know you warn the user if they read all the NPC text in Neirbrook, but at the least, make it more rewarding if you do manage to beat one of the sea horse monsters. Right now they're really difficult when you first encounter them, for almost no reward. Additionally, the Ixion fight is a bit easy, but being the first real boss of the game, this is understandable. I also concur about the damage variance, the numbers seem wild and somewhat unpredictable.

4) Zephyr is a good main character. You give just enough detail to keep the player interested in him, while not so much that you overload us right away. He is not a caricature in the way that a lot of main characters are, which is good; often game designers will stress one or two main aspects of a character to death. The interaction between him and the other characters are all believable, in character, and often amusing or illuminating.
Winter is a good character as well; you manage to get across her main emotions and thoughts without any dialog, which is very difficult sometimes. I honestly don't have any complaints about her character; she seems vulnerable enough to be endearing, yet also realistic enough for a chocobo character (eating the neighbor's vegetables was a good touch). It doesn't hurt that she has a practical purpose too - crashing the game if you ride her near certain places! I jest.
Hautley seems a little bit stereotypical, and caricatured. but this is excusable since you don't see many scenes with him. Just be sure to add dimension to his character in the future.
Reiner is the character that I would complain the most about, so far. He seems far too rigid in manner and speech, but perhaps the most important thing is that he isn't likable. The only time I really felt like Reiner was beginning to gain some credibility to his character was when he calls Zephyr by name for the first time, in the cave scene. I know you want him to be an "honor-before-all-else" rigid character, and I'm not entirely sure what you have planned with him, but be sure to add some more "human" seeming qualities to him. If he remains aloof to everyone forever, without any seeming changes, he will likely be people's least favorite character.

5) I loved the idea of many of the features of the demo, such as the mini-games (Triple Triad!!!) and the side quests. I also loved the characters in the garrison in Lindblum. Cid was a high point, and great comic relief. Just be sure not to abuse his relationship with Cait Sith too much. If you can find new ways to add humor via developing their relationship, go for it; their relationship so far is hilarious. Just be sure not to milk it so much that it gets old. Additionally, I loved the system for DNA strand drops; add more of that! Maybe some monsters in optional places could drop some too?

6) Hmm.. my only complaint would be that it's not completed, really. Which isn't much of a complaint to lodge against a demo. :P

7) As far as polish, I'd say 9/10 for what's added so far. There were almost no text errors remaining (yay!), the dialog was well made and executed, the scenes were pretty darn good too. The minor things for polish would include the Elixir tooltip, the remaining Character info in the Status menu, and other minor things along those lines.
As far as error-free, we have a little farther to go (I'd say 8/10). Winter crashing glitches aside, I found a bug in Lindblum Castle, as well as the recipe glitch in Crescent (which it sounds like was already fixed). Essentially, though, in Lindblum Castle, if you talk to Godot from the right-hand side (instead of from the bottom), the dialog proceeds as normal, but at the end, your screen dims and stays black forever. I could still move around, and even managed to talk to the NPC in the other corner, so it appears to just be a visual error. Still, rather game breaking.

8) It is looking very good so far! P.S. Your composer sucks! o.o :D

-Brandon