VERSALIA'S PROFILE

author=Feldschlacht IV
I am aware of those games. They don't look bad. However, my opinion stands.

Can 2k3 do that? Yes.

Can it do it without losing graphical quality and looking grainy? No.
note I chose the screenshot with steel phalluses

RMVX (and I guess XP?? never used it) isn't really inferior to 2k3 for mapping except that it is one layer short. I don't consider the lack of diagonal tiles an inherent fault (that's RTP, the default resources, not the engine), and I don't consider the auto-tiling an inherent fault (nobody's forcing you to use the auto-tiles). Those are the most common complaints that I hear. It can do everything else, parallax mapping et al.

Now that I got that out of the way:

author=geodude
we could always not define an editor at all

yes plz. I almost assumed this from the get-go

It sounds like you've got this well thought-out. It also sounds very cohesive, and somewhat interesting, but I was trying to figure out why it didn't really seem new and fresh. I realized that this system is, essentially, Final Fantasy X-2 (or XIII) with a party size of one. You're really just "class changing" unless there's a huge variety among equippable items. You'll almost never want to keep someone with low defense in for very long, as they're solo. And in the scenario of "this enemy has high defense" that you described, is it really considered innovative to have the strategy be "switch to the class that uses Defense Down, cast Defense Down" / "Cast analyze, manipulate weakness"?

I think what will really make this sparkle is working on your swapping mechanic and the speed of each character, similar to their differing TP regen rates. Obviously, changing between characters takes some time. However, you can cleverly play with players' decisions by intentionally allowing (random examples) Denn to be extremely quick to swap in but slow to swap out, or Mielle allows anybody switching into her spot to do it faster. Someone like Lourne might have skills that are really slow, but when you switch him in, he gets an instant free hit...

Your party-rotating mechanic is your strength here, so you should give the players incentive to use it differently and intelligently. I would also suggest something like locking out the "Switch" command for the first couple rounds of combat, or something, because there's no real disadvantage to walking around on the map as any one character or another. I would think you don't want Hellem, who sounds frail, to be leading the party when you get attacked, but you can just switch him right out so it doesn't much matter. Also, I earlier mentioned equippable items - that's another thing that separates your system from one person class-changing. You can swap between *entire sets* of gear in tandem with your change. You should definitely focus on making sure that a variety of equipment is available, because that strengthens your swapping mechanic. :)

WALL-O-TEXT POWER, MAAAAAAKE UP!

I LOVE THIS. Really, fantastic. You didn't use every single kind of tree and flower and plant, you didn't randomly scatter them throughout the village making nonsensical clutter, the visual lines are very clean...!

(Although the sunbeams are a little too opaque. Make them more transparent and tint them a warmer color - like sunshine!)

There are also a great many changes from the typical systems - Social Links have been repurposed,

Basically, yes! Social links! Social links that do new, interesting things to your game! :D