MRANNOYUS'S PROFILE

So I played the 1.1 demo and I found the game to be enjoyable. However as soon as I played the 2.0.2 demo's battle system I found it to be completely lacking in several areas.
The writing of the game itself is quite good as well as entertaining. This however does not save the game's quality due to the nature of the battle system.
The system in question I have found to be flawed in such ways:

1. The 'guard' is entirely unreliable and I have no idea when I should actually press the A key because the game does not point out when you should nor does it make it obvious because I press a few frames before the enemy hits me. I have guarded a few times occasionally however those were entirely by accident and I can not recreate them.
2. Some enemy attack animations actually hurt you before the animation even plays the "Hit" effect.
3. The battle system could use a lot of work because of most battles feeling sluggish and incredibly dragged on due to enemies taking repeated hits as well as the timing system being slow; an example is when Mario jumps back and waits there for a split second for the timing to pop up. The commands that pop up may also be very sketchy as occasionally it will fail even when the command is done.
The victory dance is also exceedingly long.
4. Money gained from battles is also rather low, I could not equip myself properly without grinding for quite awhile; this is also dragged on by point number 3.
5. The 'Refresh' ability also is quite random as it may flip to a poison mushroom several times in a row or quickly flip to a flower before flipping to a poison. The ability also has glitched on me during a fight and the picture vanished entirely leaving me to guess what it was supposed to show.

The basic premise and the whole idea behind the project is excellent and the cutscenes are superb, but the fact remains that 50% of the gameplay in most RPGs are spent on the battling. I could not find myself having fun and often got frustrated at the ridiculous quirks as noted above. As a critic would say, 'This requires polish,' and quite a lot of it. I still commend you for the effort and your skills as a writer, but it's completely overshadowed by the aggravation caused by the list.