Wow, thanks so much for the in-depth feedback!
There's definitely a lot of stuff we have to polish up and some of these issues are remedied more or less in the current build that's not quite ready yet, but I'm really glad the characters and writing landed for you, as that was definitely one of the key focuses. I totally also share that pet peeve of random encounters and grind, so we've definitely focused on trying to give the player agency in choosing when to initiate battle!
As it stands yeah, there's def a lack of consistency in terms of assets, both musical and even in terms of sprites. We've even been working on overhauling the battlers to better represent the characters' designs. Though, with the textboxes some were intended to represent character thoughts rather than speech, but I wouldn't be remotely surprised if I accidentally used the wrong one in places here and there. Also I really wanted to have the characters follow on the map but it actually could adversely affect certain mechanics. Later on in the game we started adding cutscenes where they would show up, though, we still have to go back and make those consistent.
As far the overworld mazes and dungeons, what do you feel would make them more fulfilling? Are there any additions you'd personally like to see? I was a bit worried about overloading the player with dialogue at a few points so I had wanted to give them freedom of exploration between set pieces, but it's probably a lot less engaging than the scripted segments because there's not really a ton of great incentive to explore and the mechanics are pretty simple. I would love to add more action oriented segments or even minigame type events, but neither Momo nor myself are really programmers! Though, eventually we would love to make our own tilesets from scratch, it'll probably be a while.
But in any case, thanks again for playing and for giving such thought to your review! We both really appreciate it!
-meido