The production of Ouroboros is nothing short of fantastic. Heavily inspired by DND, and I'm fairly sure I see a lot of Etrian Odyssey in this (one of my favorite game series ever).
The game is mostly pleasant to play. I absolutely love love loved the Battle Speed options and I got to turbo the animations as much as I wanted.
The grid map as the actual in game map was a very fun touch. I liked how the enemies were done, either moving when you move or automatically moving whether you move or not. It reminded me fondly of dodging FOEs in Etrian Odyssey.
The game, however, is way too wordy in my opinion. I do not remotely mind dialogue heavy games. I got the point of it. I think it could have been paced a bit better. I would have just been let to explore and learn the mechanics at first, but felt I kept being stopped for a lot of description paragraphs.
For an hour time limit, I think this game may have pushed far too many mechanics into it. It feels like a jammed suitcase. It has a very deep set of mechanics that would be great for a 50 hour RPG, but for a short one I felt overwhelmed and like I was playing wrong. In the end, I didn't even need the majority of the stuff it built, such as crafting weapons and returning to get all treasures I was not able to get.
The game ends, very abruptly. It feels more like a demo of a proof of concept rather than a complete game. Which I totally get. A deep RPG in an hour is almost impossible. And IGMC forces very strict time limits in developing/and playtime.
Story wise, it also had way too many concepts in too small a space. I felt like developments were thrown at me, but didn't have weight because none were particularly built on. I did not have an emotional connection to any character, but I did enjoy how they looked/and the aging mechanic. I just felt it didn't mean that much in the end and would have done much better in a slower paced, much longer game.
I loved so many of the concepts of this and would absolutely love to see this fleshed out.
The biggest flaw to me was the Golem boss fight. It was a good idea, but it needed a lot more flexibility to fail. It turned into a vague trial and error thing for me. I even left and tried to find solutions. I would suggest if doing something this easy to fail based off timing/movement, to not give a game over.
I would have personally cut much of the mechanics and dialogue, and just let the player explore/battle. The game itself could have used a couple more boss fights/maps and less dialogue/mechanics so there is more room in the time limit to allow this. When I reached the last boss I was rather surprised, even though I was already past the hour mark (on fastest battle option)
The ending being a promise for more adventure also makes it feel more like a tech demo than a full experience.
I may seem like I'm complaining a lot, but I really enjoyed this. The flaws didn't remotely actually bother me, I've tolerated much worse in other games. I feel the need to point them out as this could be such an instant killer of a game and I think WILL be when you continue this concept. Your art is mind-blowingly good and everything ran so well. I hardly even recognized it was RPG Maker anymore and likely only did because I have so much experience with it.
Keep up the fantastic work. Absolutely great job.