So I've finally finished your game, I was playing nonstop for 3 days and I have to tell you that it was an amazing experience. Kinda surprised that there are no reviews or comments on this so I'll leave my own because I can see that you have put tremendous amounts of effort in this game.
Story and Areas
The plot resolves around 4 main heroes that have lost their memories and the struggles to find their path to regaining them and defeating the main villain and the 4 titans that are the cause of the problems. You can choose any route to explore and clear, each city has it's individual story and mechanics, there are massive amounts of content to explore and tons of secrets around the map.
For me, funnily enough I managed to find the Underground Depths as my first dungeon because of my curiosity to crack that wall on the south beach. I got spooked immediately because of the eerie super dark environment, and then someone attacked me from the dark. It was a demon and he casted a doomsday spell on me on the first turn. I was like "what the actual fuck". That thing scared the shit out of me, and later on I found out that you are not suposed to go there until the ends of the game :D
Then I did the wrong thing again and cleared the Deep Forest first while being underfarmed. It was a very tough and challenging boss fight and I had to reset it like 13 times because I thought you couldn't dispell the mana drain and healing mechanics of the boss. But I managed to clear it by spamming bombs until there was only the boss and the rest was easy. The game from there was very chill and entertaining. There are TONS of secret dungeons, secret areas and even secret bosses like that Behemoth creature roaming around that also scared me with its instakilling abilities early on. The game has a very endearing Final Fantasy vibe and I can see that you have drawn a lot of inspirations from it.
Combat, Mechanics and Bosses.
If there is one thing that I love about an JRPG it is the combat system. Your game could be great, but if I'm disliking the combat mechanics, then I'm dropping it right away. In this game, the combat uses an Turn-based SPEED mechanic inspired from FF as you said before, and it is GREAT. The animations are amazing, the Sprites looks great and the Bosses are really challenging and entertaining.
The only problems I have with this is the scaling. It looks kinda weird because there are no levels and you can only get stronger by gathering items or by finding Lucky Stars or Heart Containers to boost your stats early on. So sometimes I felt like I was wondering around dodging monsters just to enter a new city and buy the new equipments, then I would have a giant boost in strength and everything else would be super easy. There are also some items that are unusable from the Synthesis menu like the Demon Lord Cloak.
Another thing I forgot to mention that was also very annoying for me, Its the fact that you can't dodge enemies and they will aggro onto you even if you are interacting with an object or moving very far away. This pretty much forces you to be ultra careful every time you see an enemy and you'll have to dodge everything everytime you want to get to another city. And since you have very little space to walk on, this could be very frustrating some times. Imagine you having the best gear and everything to one shot even late game mobs, but you have to run away and dodge some bees in the beginning areas because they chase you from very far away and can delay you a lot since the escape mechanisms are also very hard to pull off (something like 20% chance as far as I can tell) and also you lose like 10% of your gold if you escape. If you had added a way to avoid those enemies it would be great for future experiences.
Another big problem I have involves the "boss" Fear that spawns in the Depths dungeon. The first time I encountered him, he spooked me really hard because I could not run away or avoid him, he was really fast :D, then Alice immediately pops up and warns me that we should run away because that monster was very strong and dangerous. He had his own theme song and it was super eerie and disturbing. This instantly gave me a flashback of the Persona 3 game where the Grim Reaper would roam around if you wandered around long enough, and the Grim Reaper was an INSANELY strong boss. For a second I actually thought about running but I manned up and faced him, even though I was underleved on everybody except Karena, since I went to the Depths again to explore before clearing the main quests, but I went on with it. He started off by draining my mana and then casting life siphon on the next turns. I started to maul at him with my Karena that was hitting for 5k 5 times and even critting for 16k. Then he started casting death here and there, more life siphons, and after a while I started wondering "Is that it? Aren't you going to wipe out the party or something?" then the fight keep going for more 2 Karena turns and I just nuked him down with my DPS, he didn't even scratch my party. Now really? That was very disappointing to say the least; he was by far the easiest fight IN THE ENTIRE GAME. On top of that, he drops the most broken item in the game “Heart of Darkness” that you can farm from him. This item completely breaks the game because it allows you to vastly increase your stats permanently and it can go up to the max, making you invincible even to the final boss of the game. I got 3 of those hearts and my characters were already ridiculously strong, and since the fight is so easy, he is just tanky, then I could have farmed it all and it would have removed all the fun from the game. I get it that you are not supposed to be there so early, but if the boss that holds a gamebreaking item is so weak, then I could honestly have skipped all the other fights, sat there for some minutes and farmed full stats from him since the beginning of the game, since I’m pretty sure you could kill him very early, it only takes patience since he has no aoe abilities and deals no damage. This fight definitely needs to be rescaled or buffed, because right now it is very underwhelming.
Other than that I loved many mechanics like the Karena swords hitting multiple times, later Elric with Power Staff being super broken with Rogue's contract to spam mass haste on the party and such, and of course the Merchant upgrading his store every time you buy some items from him, that was really clever and it does make a lot of sense for the guy that you are spending massive amounts of money to upgrade his store and provide better items, that was a really nice touch. The fact that you get a different exclusive partner for many different dungeons was also a really incredible touch. Also loved that you wrote down a Walkthrough to the game, that was very helpful to find the tools and the Marks, and it shows a massive amount of effort to make this game as pleasant as possible for all sorts of players, well done.
Another thing that I discovered by accident is that there are many endings and a lot of undiscovered content that I passed through. I decided to clear the Depths before the main boss so I could have some challenging fights, and the last fight with Illumia was really amazing. But then the game suddenly stops and I see that the main villain was left without magic because I destroyed the source of his powers, then he got fuckin arrested before I could fight him LMFAO that was one of the most hilarious endings I have ever seen to a game, really good stuff :D
Sadly I didn’t manage to find Elric or Lauriett’s endings, I explored most of the map and it says that you need to go to “West Cliffs” and “Shipwreck” locations, where exactly are they? I will go back and play it again until I find them but I would gladly accept some help. Also where are the “5 elites”? I didn’t find them either and it’s an achievement that I want to complete the game.
Sounds, Ambients and Puzzles
Were all amazing choices, nothing much to say about it here. Personally loved the eerie Depths soundtrack and the Spirit's fight soundtrack. The puzzles were also very charming and relaxing, with tons of hidden treasures around, great stuff once again.
Final score:
9/10
Total time playing 11:22:40