I just found out that RPG Maker XP runs in 40FPS mode, guess that explains why I thought the game was "lagging". :V
Anyway, the intro song syncing was perfect (no looping) after ticking the "Reduce Screen Flickering" option at F1.
On my first run, I found my golden chest right after the bridge. I just
walk run and kill everything I see while following the brown path, and managed to get to Lvl10 before facing Mystia. I didn't even finish the Kedama Quest lol. I really underestimated Mystia, got killed after tanking the rapid-fired danmaku on her third phase. I finally defeated her on my second try, at third phase but I almost die though.
After finding out I couldn't exit from Mystia Boss Map, I did a second run to grind to Lvl13 before fighting Mystia. Incidentally, I found the golden chest at the area right before the Kedama spawn area this time. Guess the gold chest location is randomly generated? I tried to defeat her before the first timer runs out, and failed, killed her on her second phase, saw the ending normally. On my second try, I killed her at the second phase (Timer=0:22) and the game just freeze.
Since these typos wasn't fixed in the latest demo, I guess I should mention them here:
- Control Tutorial: Is the game running to slow?
- In one of Mystia's conversation(Forgot the whole sentence): Spelt "Duell" wrong
Here is what I thought after playing the demo twice:
- The Forest of Magic stage design was good, fairies wandering around, attacking the player in groups, and retreating to the forest(trees) when they realize they chose the wrong opponent. Yeah, that's how I imagined the fairies living in the forest would behave. Good job on that.
- For the boss fight, after seeing the timer, I was expecting the boss to replenish her HP after the end of each phase/spellcard, like how boss fight works in Touhou games. I was wrong, the boss fight ends right when I depleted her HP to 0, and was kinda disappointed that the battle ends so fast, but then I thought maybe it's because third phase was the last phase, so I did another boss fight to confirm. Then, my next boss fight ends on the second phase. I'm not sure if this was intended or just another bug.
- If I assume that this is unintended, and it is possible to capture spellcards, I was thinking that maybe the player can get different rarity/rank of rewards, depending on how many spellcards the player managed to capture during the boss fight. Yet again, maybe you were trying to make the boss stronger, harder to get close to and uses more hard-to-dogde attacks as time passes too long, thus encouraging the player to defeat the boss as fast as possible before things get out of hand. I guess that would work as that would emphasize the importance of choice of equipments/accessories and attack formation/strategy planning before facing a boss fight.
-If I assume this is intended, the way I see it, player can survive most of the spellcards (except the last) simply by just running in circles around the boss stage and wait for the timer to run out. Maybe not if the boss fires danmaku Touhou style, but I doubt that works since player's attack is melee, and also the fact that you can't shoot diagonally. Also, there really isn't any advantage in trying to defeat her within the time limit, and player can ends boss fight too fast if they over-grind too much, which is bad because finishing the boss fight without seeing their full potential kinda takes the fun out of an RPG game. What I would suggest is that instead of putting the timer, you can make the boss changes attack patterns or use spellcards after their HP is dropped to a certain level or %.
Overall, I think this project looks good so far and have great potential. I really like the concept, and can easily be one of my favorites if done correctly. Can't wait for the full game to be completed.
I apologize if I somehow offended you in any way, since I always over-thinking things when there is too less information. :V
By the way, I was wondering if you are going to exclude Suika, Tenshi and Iku, since I didn't see their sprites during the introduction.