RINE'S PROFILE

Most companies are more worried about brand dilution than anything else. There's a reason Pokemon GO has such a wonky combat system. They are worried if you can get your Pokemon fix in a free to play game, people won't buy the original (probably nonsense, but a legitimate concern).

Fan-games fall right in there, and most only avoid problems by being small and going unnoticed.

Make no mistake: Under current legal precedent, you do -not- have any right to make a game with characters that still fall under copyright. You have some rights under Fair Use to use them in certain very limited contexts (Usually just footage for critique and the like), but even that is an affirmative defense, not an outright 'right'. It sucks that currently copyright extends for basically forever, but it does.

If it falls into the public domain, you can use it all you want though, as long as you don't infringe too much on someone else's more recent take. (Cinderella is fine, Disney's Cinderella isn't).

Besides, never understood the urge to just copy someone else's character. Getting inspired, sure, but use your creative juices to design something that's -yours-.

Remix, don't reuse.

Was trying to not get into too much detail about it for fear of leadening the mechanics with the broader implications but...

The game is going to have a lot of interplay between various mechanics, and I need to keep track of whether the player has recruited a character/actor, if they are currently recruited, and if they have died. The recruited/not part is important for various dialogues and mission availability, the dead part is important to character interplays and character events that will allow them to grow.

In example, a pair of characters are recruited together. All their story events are available normally, except the last one, which requires the other one to be dead, which finishes their story, and unlocks a new ability to replace the one thats useless due to their lack of partner.

I think it helps to think of politics in the people aspect, as opposed to the big abstract we've built up in life. In games, we don't need to represent the weird interplay of numerous topics that build up political parties, but we can use those sorts of topics to help inform on human motivation. This helps us create more complex characters, and sympathetic ones who side with people we are against, but in an understandable way.

In a short example, you have your typical evil empire, and your rebellion. You need a reason for a rebellion, so we say that the empire enslaves a certain race and is militaristic. Cool, players can easily get behind taking down a slaving/warring empire. But now we run into one of their generals, who is overall a nice gal. When brought up, she says she's against slavery, but she was a skilled soldier in another realm who was held down by nobility being the only ones allowed to lead. When the empire came in and her realm lost, she was offered a promotion based on her skill, as opposed to her lineage. Thus, she sees the empire as rather egalitarian (skill based promotion as opposed to family), and yet there are inconsistencies in her beliefs that can be leaned on to show depth and character.

This encompasses several ostensibly 'political' topics (forced labor, racism, aggression vs other nation-states, merit based governmental operations, nepotism), but because part of it is in our understanding of the world (how the empire works visa vis why its bad), and the character herself (her motivations relative to other ways it works) we can have a far more nuanced understanding of the world in a more grey as opposed to black and white view.

From prior experience in games with lots of experimentation to discover things like combos, after a point players will tend to find a good combo that works for them, and stick with it through the entire game unless something forces them to change. It may not be the most efficient, or fastest strategy, but its easier than trying to experiment to find something slightly more optimal. I can easily see a player with your system experimenting until they find a pretty good attack combo, and pretty good heal combo, and just using them until the game ends. It isn't bad players, its just what we tend to do (Known as first order optimal strategies, like e. Honda's hand slap in street fighter), easy to do, works very well for a while. If nothing forces them to change up or grow their strategies, they'll use that the whole game.

On another point, it looks like your combo system is designed to make combining both characters moves into one useful thing. Be aware that basically limits optimal play to either 'attacking' or 'healing' in one turn, as splitting it will be less effective.

Probably because making sure its balanced requires testing, and then, more importantly, caring enough to fix it. Its not limited to RPGMaker games, I've played so many games where the developers didn't test balance enough and you either break it really quickly with a first order optimal (big fancy words) strategy, or if you're not playing it 'right' its wall-banging hard.