Disclaimer: I might not be this game's primary audience. Bahamut Lagoon and Kamidori Alchemy Meister happen to be among my all-time favorite games but I've never been that big on the SRPG genre as a whole. I don't care for FFT or P5T, and my only experience with Fire Emblem is that GBA game which has a girl named Lyn in it. Don't think I cannot appreciate what you're doing here, though. Taking this plodding, story-heavy, character-driven genre and creating a breakneck, procedural roguelite take on it is a noble undertaking. To be honest, I'd sooner play a completed version of West Marches over any of the nu-Fire Emblems (I'm vaguely aware of the many controversies surrounding the recent entries in the franchise).
OK, let's talk about the demo... five seconds in and I'm already softlocked! The "Load" button was clickable so, naturally, I clicked it. Apparently, when there's no save file, the game just hangs on that screen. I've also experienced softlocks after having all of my units die or loading a save file where all characters are dead; the game allows you to continue, but without anyone on the party, the game freezes sooner or later when accessing certain menu options. One last, more obscure softlock I got: after having used a certain unit to "Trade" with another, and getting dupes and items popping out of nowhere on my inventory, the first unit's menu was gone on subsequent turns and it was stuck copying what I believe to be the actions of the last party that had acted. This party was stuck with the "Attack" command once, and there were no valid targets nearby, making the game stop responding. Mission: eliminate such occurrences!
Some other pointers for you to begin working on until DD 56 comes:
- the attack preview screen could be transparent, or change position so as to let you see which character you're currently targeting. Yeah, I've noticed that you can still scroll between targets, but not being able to see them makes you feel lost, not good UX;
- permadeath is uncomfy asf (this is a personal opinion). From what I understand, some of the Fire Emblem entries have permadeath (this is a controversial feature, I gather), and moreover, permadeath is a staple of the roguelite genre. You're pretty much contractually obligated to have permadeath in your game then, but on the other hand, the cast of characters being "generated" means that we can be more comfortable in letting go of them than we would be in a game with a fixed cast. What I suggest is making it so that replenishing units is quick and not costly. So far, I found this "Sellsword" dude (cool name) who wanted 80% of the party's starting money to join us (I had already spent the cash), and two recruit events (rare and you have to spend an entire turn doing this), not nearly enough in my opinion. Having a way of mass replenishing fallen units for money would be self-balancing, I believe: if you lose many units, at least you won't be permanently doomed down the line, but you also won't have much money to spend on other stuff, such as splurging in mini-events, buying old women lunch or improving your surviving fighters;
- kind of related to the previous point: you could implement some kind of scaling or unit cap on the enemy army according to the size of yours. Once the game generated me with three units and, though I skipped all of the combat mini-quests, I was tasked to defeat 11 troops on the final map. Well;
- generally, combat mini-quests shouldn't be just as difficult as the final quests. From my limited understanding of RPG balancing, the initial battles of a game are supposed to be stepping stones to your characters. Aside from improving the characters' in-game stats, they give the players themselves a chance to grow familiar with the combat mechanics and even makes them question whether or not and when they're ready to take on a more challenging level -- rather than being thrust straight into one;
- keep in mind that even our starting troops are randomly generated, so I believe you really do need easier challenges or even curb-stomp battles until you can take greater control of your party composition, at least on the mini-quests;
- bowmen are overpowered, they can shoot through walls. On a more serious note, the assassin is easily my favorite unit; love his movement, dodge rate and frequent double attack. Too bad they're quite rare;
- the player could use a money display during mini-quests where we're prompted to spend cash;
- mixels, rixels, dixels, sneexels. I don't care about these at all, but some anons make a big deal out of them.
Other than that, focus on UX and bugs, I'd say. You can still interact with the menu while the dialogue system is active, for example; this may lead to problems. Also, don't forget to look into the Trade bug I mentioned earlier.
Playthrough: 1+ hour. Completed three main quests ("!"), but not on the same file (because of the soft locks and all).