So, after 45 minutes in real time, and then 45 minutes in in-game time, I made it to the final boss, but I couldn't defeat him even within the time limit based on the in-game clock instead of real time. It was a massive difficulty spike, the dude was basically dealing 80% damage on a single party member each turn.
Anyway, the biggest issue with the game here is bloat. It's a pretty great full length RPG trapped in the body of a Harold Jam entry, and thus in my opinion gets hurt in both directions; it has to rush itself in order to meet the criteria of the jam, but it also has so much content that it can't meet that criteria at all.
There are, like, 100 different weapons (all of which you must scroll past every time you want to equip the new item you just found), five party members in battle, at least 9 different playable characters which I'm certain I didn't even find all of them since I randomly recruited RATD Reid while I was trying to find where the game's easy mode was located, and the sorta Hearthstone FTB system the game cultivates kinda necessitates enemies be needlessly spongey to facilitate the procedural growth that occurs between turns. This all wraps together to make a game that feels like it's way too much. It was very overwhelming, but in a way that I think would have been easy to digest if the game had more time to breathe and be a game instead of a jam entry. The fact that 90 minutes appears to be the expected runtime of the entry really speaks to this; I gave a pretty generous pass last year when the game nearly doubled the time limit, but after seeing it happen again this year it's really difficult for me to reward a game that can't seem to control its own scope like this, even if I did have a lot of fun.
The combat is excellent, this is a system that I would have loved to see in a 10-20 hour RPG easily. I hear this every year and you probably do too, but I would love to see this system expanded on in a future project of yours. However, this system is really held back by being in a jam, and its attempts to compensate for that end up hurting the rest of the game within the context of a jam. There are a bunch of enemies, each takes 5-6 turns to kill seemingly by design, the bosses take *eons* to slay, and even just navigating menus filled with so much fluff eats up a ton of time. There's also the prologue where you play as Reid, which, while very cute, really overstays its welcome and lasts a solid 10 minutes when I honestly think it could have been cut entirely without really affecting the game much overall.
I definitely don't want it to come off as this game being a waste of time; it is not, I had a ton of fun exploring the systems and seeing these characters from different games I love (it was really cool running into Reid only to discover it was MY Reid!) However, as a jam entry, I feel it didn't *respect* my time, in the sense that it kinda just ran as long as it wanted to without consideration that I may be in the middle of a voting queue, playing several entries, or simply playing games in the jam expecting concise, casual experiences. It's a really great game, but not so great as a jam entry, if that makes sense.
I know this probably came off pretty negative, but time is one of the most valuable and difficult to manage resources in a jam, both as a dev and as a player, so seeing this game spend its time so flagrantly kinda rubs me the wrong way. I still really like it, and I *implore you* to find something to do with this system in a future project, maybe after Moonfell or something. But, like I said before, it's a great game trapped in a jam's body. It needs a little room to breathe.