I love your passion for fantasy games and themes. Not sure if this was solely made by you, but it's pretty good for an attempt at a JRPG. And the crystal motifs are pretty cool throughout your creations. The party's variety is unique and entertaining. I also enjoy the development of the relationship of the MC and their love interest.
I'm 8 or 9 hours in and my main issue with the game is with how ... unnecessarily difficult the game can be at times and the level pacing/inconsistencies. I have never made a game myself or been involved in any projects of the sort and I imagine that there's a lot more to it than what most people imagine it takes to make a game, whether short or long. But what I will post is for constructive critique and not to say that it's all over bad.
I'm not sure if I just didn't point allocate my stats properly even though I tried to do it with the characters strengths in mind. Even then, in my personal opinion, the point allocation is too weak to even think that could be why I'm having extreme difficulty in fights. I kinda cheese in order to get rid of most of the monsters. I just flee so their sprites don't appear again in the dungeon until I exit the area and they respawn. I feel very reluctant to get into battle encounters (most of the time.) The only places I feel that should be this challenging are boss encounters.
I also think that AP costs and generation are pretty whacked out. It really takes a lot of time to get enough AP to unleash some really necessary techniques in battle. I know that certain equipment allows AP point generation whether through offense or defense, but it's crazy how much I need those skills and how long it takes to unleash them.
I understand that mages are glass cannons, but Su's health pool is crazy low. I feel like half of my battle actions are taken just to keep Su alive. I know they have a barrier ability, but again, like 100 AP points just to use it and sometimes the enemies have multiattacks or spells that do enough damage to knock it out in a single use. It's kinda nuts how fragile the character is.
** SPOILERS FOR FELLOW PLAYERS **
I'm at the mining dungeon with the boss fight of two robot guardians and then the Darkspore Drey afterwards. I have no idea, through whatever amount of grinding or what tactics to use in order to survive that. Especially with facing the nega-Drey and while the MC is knocked out and just relying on the 3 characters alone. The nega character has the biggest health pool I've ever seen through out the game and my characters barely put a dent in it. I literally thought it was a scripted event where all the characters get beaten and something else happens. I cannot believe how hard these difficulty tiers are stacking.
As far as I could tell, there was one scene where the music was bit too over the top or cheesy where I had to mute it so I could enjoy the scene (first romantic encounter with Garet.) As far as I can tell, everything else works out, but that instance popped into my mind while playing. Something more subtle and intimate would've done a better job. The sound scapy type music from Ad Astra and Far Beyond the World worked perfectly most of the time during intense, emotional, or intimate scenes, just as an example.
I have not bothered to make food recipes in the game because of how many ingredients that they require and because of how expensive the economy is in general.
Another thing that kinda bothered me is that the quests, side quests, and arena encounters didn't give the party XP (maybe I'm overlooking it, but I know there's absolutely no XP from the fights in the arena, just medals for the arena exclusive goods.) And I could've sworn that the MC suggested that the arena would be good for training or something like that.
I will try to finish the game, hopefully I can adjust the difficulty since whatever I have it at is making it hard to enjoy. Challenge can be fun, but more so when it's an option like hard side quests for lots of XP or rewards or secret bosses/encounters.