I was messing around earlier and did a playthrough where I rejected everyone except Lin.  In retrospect declining to save Mina was a bit dark, and also does not bode well for the future plot due to bird requirement.  Eventually I did manage to get stuck as after getting back to Bow with Yua we go to Trouts mansion but the guard wont let us in...

Since you made it so that we are not required to recruit characters, im curious what do you have planned for the story after trout anyway?

I think you should add a feature where you can save and recruit Ray after your fight at Evrai. After the fight between Ryu and Ray he was able to ask for forgiveness and redeem himself since he was from the black dragon clan. Since in the original BOF2 the black dragon clan doesn't get enough attention. Also it would be more fun if we can recruit Bo and Karn since they are still on their house on an island.You're great game developer btw, keep up the good work, sending support from Philippines 

First Impressions
I was awestruck by how faithfully this game captured the sprites and art style of the original BoFII. I was introduced to the GBA version of the game, yet I still felt a strangely-nostalgic sensation upon seeing the accurate SNES color palette. The changes in dimensions (larger cities and house interiors) made the locations I saw feel bigger and more immersive. The overworld map appears to be structured differently than the original game, but that only excited me-- I could explore this world all over again. This made it feel more fresh and worth playing! My personal favorite was the incentive to find more dragon god statues; a very nice surprise. (My first perk was Lightning Welp.)
The additions to gameplay were a pleasant surprise. I was expecting a straight port, but the inclusion of Ryu's skill tree and possibly recruiting more characters gives this game a nigh-infinite replay value. I am trembling with excitement merely thinking about it! I can't wait to see more.
Some Suggestions
-The sidequest system is fun, but easily exploitable. I could do the "get revenge on cheating husband" quest two times without noticeable penalty.
-The hunting minigame terrifies and confounds me. The Duck Hunt aspect is a fun callout considering that Bosch is a dog, but I also do not know what I am doing. A tutorial or some clarity would be nice.
-Adding more customization to the Options screen would be appreciated, such as the ability to change the controls.
Current Thoughts
I am excited to play more of this game! It is clear that a lot of love was put into this project and I can't wait to watch it develop further.

Playing this brings back childhood memories, I can definitely feels the passion being put into this project I noticed you're working on overhaul the game I hope you have much smoother time finishing the project moving forward because this seems promising.. 

Just started a run of this yesterday. An interesting blend of new and familiar that I greatly appreciate, though it means I would really like a walkthrough or a wiki to see what I am missing. (For example, I'm still struggling to find the Wind and Devil shamans.) Adding additional characters and a skill tree for Ryu are really cool features, but I'm still trying to find the balance as Ryu rules the roost as a Ranger while everyone else dies before they get a chance to move (Rand is VERY hard to kill, but his offense sucks and healing magic is horribly inefficient). Money gain vs cost increase is also a problem, at very least until you get a grasp of how gear works.

Adding the conversations (banner messages between allies) is a WONDERFUL addition that adds so much to the party, but I would ask if there's a way to archive them (they always seem to happen as I'm entering a transition like a door or stairs). Seeing Rand and Sten debate combat philosophies, Lin school Rand on what it takes to battle efficiently, or Lin begging Nina even more about learning magic. I always thought this crew was exceptional, and you managed to expand on it perfectly.

One thing I do wish I knew ahead of time is the potential for romances. Apparently Ryu chose Lin before I even knew that was a feature, and there weren't any ways to graciously back out once that became apparent. I always considered Ryu/Katt's relationship to be more of a "Bash Bros" affair than an... "affair" affair, so I was caught off guard when the text cheerfully informed me that both of them made their way to Ryu's bedroll. Leaves me wondering what other additions were added to the equation that were never mentioned, or even the impact this one wrinkle could have on the remaining game. (Might be interesting to see Nixie trading advice on how to deal with their beaus.)

A few things I noticed that are worth noting for BoF2 vets trying to get into this:

1) Bleu/Deis is still in the game, but the recruitment features are different. Rather than visiting her home, you have to get a book from the library in the academy, then she predictably reveals herself and offers to join. This probably means you can get her much earlier, but it does require a boss fight.

2) The item customization drastically changes how gear works. The value of the new gear seems to be in passives rather than built in stats, so it's no longer a game of walking in and grabbing the latest wares in each town. Customizing gear has a much bigger effect on power than shelling out for new gear.

3) Ryu's transformations don't work as the same MP dumps they used to, throwing every last MP into a single attack. Now they use the CB pool to do their attacks and they remain in play until the battle's over or you choose to revert. This means that MP skill books aren't totally wasted on him, though his pitiful MP score means that he can't use them without MP-increasing gear or stat boost items.

4) Shamans now serve two separate purposes. You can equip them like an accessory for a stat boost AND fuse two of them into a character for a sprite shift (such as turning Jean into his badass knight form or Spar into a mushroom. These two are not exclusive: you can fuse Water into Jean to get his now named "Lagoon Knight" form AND equip her on Nina to give the bird girl extra magical oomph. Equipping them as gear does not result in physical differences, not even the palette swaps like Red Sten. Fusing and unfusing shamans from party members is done at the home base, but swapping them as accessories can be done anywhere. Fun addendum: this version actually explains the shamans as descendants of Karn (the ally from BoF1 that could fuse himself with allies to create powerful forms), which wonderfully explains who they are and what they do. Karn still shows up on the giant island, but he makes it clear that he and Bo are nonviolent undead of some sort rather than just being inexplicably alive centuries after their game.

The largest of the bugs I found that really stood out to me (beyond the recurring issues of missing "wounded" sprites for some enemies, inconsistent pathing, and ill-formatted skill tooltips) are regarding buffs/healing effects that don't work correctly. The light dragon's penultimate tier includes a healing spell that is supposed to heal and buff defense. It does the defense buff fine, but DEALS damage rather than recovers it. Several enemies also have buffs that do damage rather than help them, to the point that they damaged themselves more than I did. Lin during the Corsair duel is an example that sticks in my skull. 

So the TLDR version of my review: A rich and rewarding retelling of the classic game with a lot of additions that expand the game in more ways than I can easily describe most of which are wholly to the game's benefit. It being an independent passion project, however, is evident as inconsistent and missing sprites, bad pathing, and errors with ability scripting are still prevalent. Not flawless, but forgiving these flaws can reward you with an engaging retelling of a legendary game.

Revised Review after at least 22 hours of gameplay. *Bold text are the revisions*

Here are some things  I like and dislike. Keep in mind that I may sound critical in the dislikes section, but it's only because I care about the game and want to see improvements. This doesn't mean I hate the game. I like the game overall.

Likes:

1. The change to Ryu's dragon powers. I hated the original BoF2 system. It was such a wasted potential to Ryu's unique lineage abilities, especially because he can't fuse with shamans and really has nothing else to do but attack. The skill tree for him to have access to roles like DPS, tank, and dragon powers focus were highly welcomed in my book.

2. The revised/retranslated dialogues. I'm loving it so far. The original was bad, but it wasn't entirely the fault of the translators. A recent interview with the two guys responsible revealed they didn't even speak Japanese and had limited resources. They did take some liberties, which I hated, but it wasn't too bad. I still knew what was going on in the story and between the characters during my first playthrough. Your localization seems to be more in tune with the fan retranslation from Ryusui's, and I like it. Ryusui's mod made the dialogue more in line with the original and I wish video game localizers would do this more often instead of changing things from their original meanings.

Adding additional dialogue and with some side quests to flesh out characters. Jean and Yua's story was far more enjoyable in this fan made version compared to the original. 

3. The combat is modernized. I like all the new abilities I've seen so far for characters like Bosch, Ryu, Nina, Lin, and Rand. 

4. The ability to recruit party members like Nina and Lin out of the original order. I wandered out of Corsair and ran into a scene triggering Nina's recruitment scene. This was before getting Lin and Rand. I like this freedom. 

5. The camping option that was introduced in BoF3. However, it seems to be still be buggy in the beginning. I made camp after losing Bosch to the crime scene. I managed to recruit Nina and she wasn't in the campsite.

6. The new sound effects and voices are good overall. 

7. The redone soundtrack sounds great. I had no idea there were redone tracks to this game until I played this version.

8. The new romance options are a great addition. Capcom totally screwed this up in the original because all they did was tease the players with hints and never allowed any options go all the way with Ryu's love interests. I only wished there was more to Nina's side of this option for this version. Lin already has the original scenes with Taiga kept in, but also gets additional content. I'd love to see a side quest or something where it fleshes out more of Nina's story with Ryu if the player chooses her. I wasn't a fan of the whole Lin + Ryu ship anyway because she always felt more like a distraction/close friend compared to Nina. 

In the original, it didn't help that the English localization was poor as well. Couple this with Nina's shy and reserved nature and you get many fans thinking she wasn't romantically interested in Ryu. There's also the Japanese trend in these situations with the shy girl and shy guy having trouble revealing their feelings. I see it many times in anime and JRPGs where characters who obviously have the hots for each other keep referring to each other as "friend". I think this is a cultural thing or trend with Japan in certain romance scenes. I didn't really know how Nina felt in the original until I got the sad ending and Nina ended up being the one to retrieve Ryu. You also have to talk to her when she's in her room during certain scenes or else you'd miss her showing hints she's romantically interested in Ryu. This is why I like Nina's new scenes with Ryu in this version. She wasn't taken out of character either. This was much appreciated because I hated all the fanfics back in the day about Nina and Ryu. Fans often took her out of character and she's no longer reserved and shy. 

Dislikes/Bugs:

1. Ryu losing HP when reverting back to human form was mentioned to be a bug, but I'll keep it posted here. Hopefully, it'll be fixed in the next version.

2. The frequent crashes. Yeah, I know you're a one-man-team and you have your personal life outside this project. I really do appreciate your work. It's just frustrating for the game to crash often and randomly. It's crashed at least 8x on me so far. I hope you can fix this problem. My first crash was during the Corsair coliseum battles. I made it all the way to Lin and the game crashed. The crash is strange because it seems like the game is still running in the background, but it's stuck in place in the menus. I can still hear the button sound effects to select/cancel things, but the menu just freezes in place forcing me to close and restart the game. 

The worst crash I had was during the last boss fight (Not spoiling it here but this boss seems to be the very last boss of the game). The game crashed twice on me AND it was when I had the boss down to around 10% health. It's infuriating because it happened both times. I gave up and took a break after the 2nd crash. 

3. *Aggro with Nina was confirmed to be a major bug for the latest release version 4.1b.* I saw a YouTuber having the same problem I did with this bug. 

The aggro rate doesn't seem to be working properly. I have Ryu as a tank with the skill tree specialization and a shield that makes his aggro to be at least 200%, but the enemies seem to ignore him completely and keep hitting Nina for some reason. I looked at their stats and it shows Nina has the normal 100% aggro. I looked at her equipment and found nothing to increase her aggro either. It's frustrating because all enemies are specifically targeting her for some reason. It doesn't matter where I put her in the formation. I noticed this didn't happen when it was just Ryu and Bosch in the party. I even removed all her gear to see if that'll fix the problem, but the problem remains. Is there something about Nina that I'm not aware of? Speaking of formation, why did you remove the formations from the original? Now it's missing the options we had in the original. I feel this was needed.

4. This one's more of a nitpick. Silvia's original look was changed and I'm not a fan because I'm attached to her original version. Now it seems like she's a different person overall because she doesn't interact with Bosch the same way she did in the original version. Also, maybe I just didn't find her, but Baretta's gone too. It's such a shame because she was one of my favorite to recruit for the heroes' town.

5. The AI for Lin seems to have trouble distinguishing herself from her foe in the coliseum fight. She was mostly hitting herself throughout the fight and it was an easy win for me.

6. The recruited townsfolk for the weapons and items shops can't be interacted with. It's a bummer. I hope this gets fixed. 

7. The challenge. I love a great challenge, but it's seems quite unfair that a boss can dish out many attacks at the beginning of the battle. For example, Death Evan was able to throw out 5 moves at the beginning although I had speedy characters like Lin in the group. I even gave Ryu a bunch of speed gems, but it didn't seem to help much. What's more? Death Evan has a move that gives him around 5 additional attacks PER TURN. This is overkill. Perhaps have it reduced to 3 since he can get as many as 5 turns at the start of the battle. 

I'm glad Ryu was a tank and he was able to take all the hits, but that's only good if he gets targeted. The threat doesn't work 100% of the time. The current aggro bug with Nina made it painful to have her in the group for this boss fight because she'd take nealy ALL the hits and die EVERY TIME. There were a few times where Death Evan made around 10+ attacks on Ryu with just two of his turns. This is not challenging. It feels like the boss was just given an unnecessary unfair advantage. 

It's also unnecessary to give enemies reflect/counter attack. It seems like ALL enemies have this. There were many times Lin would kill herself because of multiple reflected attacks. A good way to balance this is to make only some enemies have it. 

8. I miss the party members having their own rooms in the main town. Why was this removed?

9. The bugs with the targeting. There were numerous times the game seems to be running fine until combat. It's here where I'll realize I can't target my party members with healing spells. It automatically only allows me to target enemies. I hope this gets fixed. 

10. I love the new soundtrack, but wasn't a fan that the battle music seems to be random now. Boss battle songs now play randomly throughout all battles. This takes away the feel of the original when you actually go against a boss. 

11. I wished the ending shows an additional scene with Ryu and his love interest. You've added in a much appreciated romance option that the original didn't have, but pursuing a relationship with Nina or Lin doesn't seem to affect the ending.

12. I love the 3 different classes for Ryu, but felt his two last forms of dragon powers were underwhelming. Maybe I just didn't know how to use these transformations or something, but I was dishing out far more damage with the standard Lightning Dragon form on the last boss. Far more damage as in doing probably 3x more damage than the Bahamut. 

13. I liked your take on Barubary, but felt it also lost a part of the memorable moment of the final encounter. I didn't have an option to fight him 1v1. Maybe add this in and put in a reward if the player chooses to do this? In the original, Barubary will tell the player the location of an item if you 1v1 him. The demon lord also has less HP if you 1v1 him in the original. This is one character I also wished Capcom would have more story on.

I updated my review for 4.1b. I'm satisfied overall and really appreciate you doing this. I hope Capcom will revive this IP now that they've mentioned they're interested in bringing back old IPs. I'll be okay if they reboot the series or just give us a true sequel. BoF6 was an abomination.