My first and second impressions of the Daybreak Empire demo:
The graphics are neat, technically and artistically. It's easy to understand what's going on, without lots of explanatory text. The HUD, terrain and character graphics integrate nicely. I particularly like the abstracted and distinctive character designs. They remind me of the way Ben Costa (the artist behind the comics Shi Long Pang and Rickety Stitch) draws people.
The controls are straightforward, click to select a unit, click to move, click to attack. Some tactical RPGs present you with a rather intricate menu system right from the start, with a multitude of classes, equipment, abilities and so on. I used to play Dwarf Fortress a lot, so I know that navigating that kind of system quite soon becomes second nature, but I'm still not sure that it's worth all the key presses and the heightened threshold for new players. In many cases, good game design can enable complex gameplay without relying on a complicated control scheme.
To actually hit something and deal damage, you need to push a button when a moving slider is close to the center of its track. I'm not sure about this concept. The first time I tried this game, I couldn't hit anything and got so annoyed I uninstalled it. When I tried it again yesterday, I could hit successfully every time. I can understand that RPG creators want to add an unpredictable factor to their battle system, and this approach is definitely an improvement over the random rolls-to-hit in Battle for Wesnoth, which have driven me to ragequit and uninstall not once but twice. That said, I still worry that doing the same old timed button push will eventually become tedious when you play the full game. If they asked me, I'd suggest that they leave it in for now, but consider ways to add variety to this aspect of the game.