Very nice RPG, lots of custom sprites and animations (both in and outside of battle, love the little key opening doors in particular), lots of story, interesting combat system, puzzles and even a collecting card minigame!

Very grateful that there's multiple difficulty settings and the ability to change random encounter rate along autosaves and free healing at regular intervals. Also extra hints when you're getting stuck in a puzzle, yay!

I think there's however a bit too much meta humor which clashes with the game's serious story. Like when a moment we're going through politics and then there's a boss going "you cannot beat me, just look at  how overpowered my stats are!"

Speaking of which, what kind of school even has a built-in casino? Why are all the elites just fine with letting their kids getting hooked to gambling from such a young age? ><

Nitpicks aside, excellent work, this is precisely the kind of game that got me inspired to get working on RPG maker myself!

Pros

Nick: Sound and art design feel great. Things are explained in a way that is easy to understand. Probably more, but we had limited time and haven't yet deeply dove into the game. The idea of losing battles expanding the narrative rather than giving out game over is the most interesting piece of this game that we encountered. Curious to see what it can do.

Ryan: Pacing is good. No big lore dump at the beginning. The player gets control very quickly and the game reveals itself through gameplay rather than just cutscenes.

Cons

Nick: It's a JRPG. Not anything you can do about that. Just not my thing. 

Ryan: Con is we can't play enough of it.

Wishes

Nick: Nude bath scene.

Ryan: More time. Time wizard powers.

Verloren starts around 22 minutes-ish.  https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1920629393

I was really confused by the start of the game.  I thought I was Helen.  Then I thought I was the Captain.  Then it turned out I wasn't either of those.  The way it is presented makes the jump to you playing as the kid, Sriracha was her name, somewhat jarring.  I almost wonder if it'd make more sense to not know there was a baby stolen.  It's just strange playing as a character that doesn't know as much about their story arc as we do.

The school is really, really big.  I like that we have the teleportation system to get around, but some of the rooms don't necessarily have a distinct enough feeling to set them apart from other rooms. I think for the gym it might make more sense if we started closer to it?  Teleporting into the Gym room but not seeing a gym was slightly confusing.

I did not go into the bathroom, but I was certainly tempted to choose that room since it was the first thing I saw.

Combat was entertaining, and having the ability to increase/decrease the random encounters is fantastic.  I felt the tutorials for combat were well explained, and I don't think I was ever lost in it.

The writing is well done, and I liked the banter that occurred between all of the students.  I also think adding in the sparkles to help point out the items you can take or interact with is a very helpful idea.  

I don't know much about card games or gambling so I can't speak on how authentic those were, but from what I could tell the slot machine and Blackjack seemed to be pretty legit.  

I've played a fair amount of RPG Maker games, so graphically it looks similar.  I do think you've done a good job in placing items and decorations around the area to help it look lived in and not cluttered.  

I played this on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1917238596?t=00h36m44s

I liked the introduction/prelude storyline, with Helen abducting the baby that you end up naming and playing. However, from there it was disjointed to the start of the game, where now you're playing the baby (grown into a young woman) in a magic school, with a dad?

I suspect that eventually the story will make sense, but the disjointedness was a bit odd. One possibility is to have more bits of the prelude lead into the magic school, or have Helen and the dad's relationship shown (maybe she passes the baby to him, maybe she's his wife?). Another possibility is to skip the prelude and start in the magical school, and the player learns about the backstory later on. I think the prelude is really cool though, and I'd be sad if it disappeared till later in the game.

The school itself is huge! 8 floors! I liked the teleportation system, which made it much easier to go from place to place without wondering which floor the gym is, for example.

The scope of the game also feels huge, and kind of overwhelming from the start of the game. Perhaps it's possible to start with a smaller bit of the school, like a single class, and slowly introduce different parts of the school till everything is unlocked.

Another minor issue I noticed is not being able to tell when a cutscene is over. There was places where I lost control of the character for a cutscene, and after the cutscene was done, I didn't realize it and waited for more. Perhaps something like black horizontal lines on the top and bottom, or some other visual signal would be great.

Overall, the backstory is really interesting, the jump to the start of the game was jarring, but I'd be very curious to learn how the backstory and the magic school is linked.

This is a really well made RPG maker game, great pacing and tutorials, fun storytelling, 2 hours in and I am still at the beginning of it. I can already feel the scale of the game, then again if I wasn't reading everything outloud, maybe it could have been a 30 min to 1 hr play. It has a pretty in depth card game within the rpg game, impressive dedication. I had fun voicing the characters with vivid personalities. 

I do suggest, once you are able to, get professional level customized art, at least customized icons and character arts, the rest you can save on budget as they already look fine, so your massive amount of actual work in game design can shine. Right now they are either defaults from RPG maker or not professional enough for it to attract players outside of indie community, you want to strengthen those.