The title card left me without any expectations to begin with, so I am glad to say that these expectations (or lack thereof) were well exceeded! There is so much I could say about the potential behind the unique summon system you have in place. Seeing as they are based on historical and mythological figures, I think one would have a right to expect something in the way of bios for all of them, bios that improve with their experience and level gains, to reflect the self-realisation mentioned in the story (library, was it?). I found myself guessing whom we might be seeing! I personally thought of Rasputin and of the Kalevala epic that surely has some connection to Norse mythology being from the far North.
To ensure the utility of new party members (because there is no way anyone would dare raise several greenhorns and counting), one will need to have new members start at higher levels somehow. Perhaps this could depend on the levels of older members that have some historical connection to provide history lessons! Perhaps they could depend on books that you read in-game!
The story is interesting, and Brooke and Hilda's interaction made me smile: "You are not a nice person." "Neither are you. It must run in the family." Upon learning to "pull", I purposely elected to attack my summon to see if Hilda chastises Brooke, so I was a bit disappointed to not see any smart reaction from Hilda. That dialogue where Amber tempts Penelope could be better done to lift it out of cliché territory.
I loved the Greek guy and the French guy conversing in the café!
I appreciated the music choices just for being unexpected. Anyone who does not like it should know how to turn down the volume rather than complain about it being too loud.
What worries me is that the judges should priniciply take an hour to play at maximum, and that the difficulty spike after gaining access to the cemetary posed something of a bottleneck for me. What happened to all the easy prey, even in the forest? I spent more than an hour on this since I had the liberty of indulging my interest in this entry. I, too, find it surprisingly tedious to set a suitable difficulty curve, so I can empathise.
Some points that you failed to explain sufficiently:
Soulcrafting as a means of not only harvesting souls from fragments, but also of enhancing older summons with fragments pulled from enemies. I discovered accidently that pulling multiples of the same fragment was beneficial for this reason.
Penelope the tutor mentioned in passing something about switching combatants in battle, and Brooke refused her explanation. Is there or isn't there a way of doing this? I could not find how this is done, accidentally or otherwise.
Some rather odd problems:
I am sure you are aware of some strange mapping aspects, so it might not do much good to elaborate here.
Sometimes (I noticed this twice out of the several times I loaded from the title screen) when I load a save file, something goes horribly wrong with the targetting of certain commands. For example, Ptolemy (in my party, NOT the zombie astronomer) once silenced my whole party in one turn (which made the battle hopeless and necessitated a reload). D'Artagnan started attacking himself and setting himself on fire. Brooke tried using pull on herself and all three of her figures. I don't know if you are aware of this or not.
Though this is clearly far from finished, this is worth my vote!