Hey Chester, don't know if you read my review or not but I'll sum it up here.
There's a lot done well in this game, a lot of nice visuals and the battle hud pops and really stands out; other than some minor errors mapping is really spot on to. Music and everything fit in place and story wise while I thought it generic initially it got interesting as the game went on.
Where this game failed for me was the battles, I found them just too easy. Sometimes I would wipe enemies out with one cast of a spell and other times I'd take zero damage. Bosses felt much better in terms of appropriate difficulty although I would have liked to see more strategy involved. There are a lot of skills in this game, too many in fact; most of them I never used because they simply weren't necessary, I suggest in future games or versions of this one trimming down on skills the player doesn't really need or make your battles take advantage of those other skills.
Here's a few other things I think worth fixing:
-Equipment is a little easy to come by; I think that's part of why I took so little damage at times because I had good equipment early. Maybe raise prices on gear and potentially offer or let the player find some in-between equipment.
-While I disliked that the hud covered up your enemies during action selection that can be more of an opinion on taste, what should be fixed is that in a few spots enemies health bars are covered up by the bottom section of the screen.
-I greatly disliked the ending I got to your game; everything was made okay by love and friendship. My issue wasn't with everything being made okay by love and friendship; heck I was a fan of Yugioh and that was chock full of love and friendship. My issue is that you don't really try and explain why that actually solved anything so I'm left confused by what actually happened to conclude what was otherwise an interesting story. I know you have other endings to your game but each ending should be strong on its own.
-A few skills don't seem to work at all (I listed them on my review on your games page).
-The battles where chester is alone, the player can get inflicted with sleep or confuse and has no way to prevent or heal it (because chester is alone). This is badly designed its frustrating to get effected by states like that and not be able to do a single thing about it other than to watch your character get hit.
Anyway I know I seem critical of your game but again there was a lot done here well and I think some polishing up could be done to fix the issues with it. I'm pretty critical of a rpgs battle mechanics and such and felt that this game needed improvement in that regard. Over all though I will say nice job the game definitely stands out compared to some other rpg entries in the contest. I'd like to see more from you as a developer.
-I asked Jtrev23 on dev fort to review your game to see another opinion on it: here's the review if you'd like to read it and haven't seen it yet.
http://jtrev23reviews.blogspot.com/2015/09/crystal-fate.html
