A Reaper's Mercy had a lot of good ideas. I like how we both had similar ways to go about the enemies. Semi copying SMT but adding our own touches to it.
The time limit of IGMC is a very brutal thing. I would have loved to see the map art drawn in same style as the enemies and character. I know why it wasn't, but the art that was made for this had a lot of charm to it, even if rough.
A lot of people said this already, but a good tutorial would have helped a lot. I understood a lot right off the bat because I too played old school games this was inspired off of my whole life. The only thing I didn't get for a bit was you get more levels from devouring than one and the karma system.
The battles themselves had a lot of meaning and depth, but I think would have vastly improved if you severely cut down enemy HP. A lot of devs worry too much about things being too easy, but I assure you even hard ass games like SMT have very fast battles.
And I think just having player be instantly healed after battles would help. I always was able to walk back to healing but most of my playtime was doing that.
I would also love to see a battle speed option/plug-in. The battles felt a bit slow and this is an RPG Maker thing. Mine was crazy slow until I found a good plug in. Really made the difference. This is just my opinion. Preferably an option for speed preference. But again I understand we only have so much time to work on these before deadline.
The allies disappearing after dying is a cool mechanic, but for our hour limit it might have been better to just have them forever after you recruit. I also think one devour per enemy would have been enough and have it improve main slightly more.
The game has some passability issues and some of the sound effects could have been turned way down. I also would have a 'Are you sure you want to Devour' dialogue as I accidently pressed it when I didn't want to. Choosing which enemy you want to do what with instead of randomly having one selected would make things smoother as well. Some of the state icons were a little too vague. Others fine.
It's a good attempt overall. All changes I suggested (it's all my opinion, feel free to ignore all) would be very fast fixes for the most part. Good work! Hope you had a good time in this brutal contest. It's a great learning experience each time I do it.