WHEELMANZERO'S PROFILE

If I can offer a bit of advice, the best way to improve your game is to playtest it into the ground. Yeah, it can get tedious at times, but it's a great way to spot issues. If any part of your game seems even the slightest bit unfun to play, play that part over and over and tweak it until it's just right. When working on a map, a random counter, a boss fight, a cutscene, anything, think of it as its own little world and focus solely on it until it's perfect.

Boss battles in particular are something you need to test repeatedly to make sure they're both fair and fun. Bosses that spam heal are particularly frustrating, so if they're going to use it, I'd suggest having them use it only once or twice per battle. In the case of the Lamia, perhaps you can have it heal only by sacrificing one of its minions once its health reaches a certain point. Just stick with it and I know you'll keep improving!

Plugged some more time into the game, so you know what that means. That's right, it's constructive feedback time! I'm happy to say I was able to finally get past that crate puzzle. Making the movable crates open was a good move, and providing an emergency exit was an even better one. Katherine can actually inflict damage now, which is a major plus, making her my second favorite character to use.

Unfortunately, I'm finding the battles to be a bit too tedious for my personal taste. The bats, rats, snakes and spiders have a lot of hp, and give rather meager rewards in terms of exp and gold. Battles are a big part of an rpg of this type, so you have to make the player want to fight. One of the ways you can do this is fine tuning the balance between effort and reward. Now if the enemies had their current level of hp and gave large amounts of exp and gold, they would be worth spending a good amount of time to defeat. Spending 8 hits per enemy excluding misses against a group of 2 monsters for 1 gold, a small chunk of exp, and a healing item feels like too much effort for too small of a reward. What I would suggest would be to lower the enemies hp and greatly increase the amount of gold they drop. That means less time grinding and more time moving forward and reaping the benefits. If there's anything rpg gamers love, it's the feeling of making progress, of growing stronger, of killing that rat in one less hit than it took them before.

The slimes on the path to the ruins were the worst offenders in terms of taking too long to kill. They have monstrous levels of hp (no pun intended), hit hard, and come in very large mobs. These battles felt more like boss fights than common encounters. At eight hits a piece against 5 slimes, it would take 40 successful attacks to clear one of these battles, unless the game blessed you with enough tp to have Dylan use his group attack. (Did I mention that I love Dylan's moveset?) I actually had to end my progress there because the slime mobs were just too tedious to fight.

This isn't to say all the battles in the game were bad. The minotaur/dark fairy combo was an epicly awesome encounter. Casting seduction on the minotaur and watching it slice that annoying little pest to bits was almost too satisfying for words. I'm sure Link would approve.

The bed in the hut by the ruins is greatly appreciated. It allows the player to grind away at the enemies next door without having to make an expensive trek back to town. I'm not sure if you have a "wait" command in the bed event, but if you do, I would recommend shaving a couple seconds off of it, as it takes a little too long for the screen to fade back in after resting. Also, I spotted one more little typo that pops up while speaking to the red-head in the hut after defeating the first boss. "We can handle whats (what's) left."

One last suggestion I'd make is to try and make your boss battles more memorable by adding some sort of gimmick to each one. For example, the lamia boss works alongside two snakes, so perhaps you could have the lamia draw strength from the snakes on occasion. You could give it an attack that decreases one of the snakes stats while increasing its own. Not only would this add a bit of flair to the battle, but it would also emphasize the fact that the lamia is a merciless beast that will feed off its brethren to survive. The reason I loved the minotaur/dark fairy fight was because it gave a sense of cooperation between the two monsters. The frail fairy hiding behind and healing the burly minotaur as he lays the smackdown on their enemies, now THAT'S an epic battle worth fighting! The same goes for the dark/fairy cockatrice mobs. Without something that sets it apart, boss battles are simply normal encounters against enemies with a longer hp bar that hit a bit harder. Giving each boss in your game a gimmick will make them both more enjoyable and more memorable.

Alright, that's enough rambling, this is a post, not a blog. To sum up my suggestions:
-either less hp and more gold or same hp and more gold+exp for enemies
-memorable gimmicks for boss battles (who cares if its been done before, all that matters is that it's fun!)

And that's it for now. I'll pop in for some more suggestions once I've gotten past those blasted slime mobs. Also, don't feel pressured to mold your game to my personal tastes. At the end of the day, this is your baby, and what it becomes is entirely up to you. I just hope my rambling can be of help to you somehow. Once again, good luck!

Blast! That's a real bummer alright. Well things happen, we understand. Sorry to hear about your game's untimely demise.

Well geez, now I just feel bad. Sorry about that, giant terrifying cyclops monster. Your spleen is safe.

Soo...do you want to hit the panic button, or should I?