-Like I said, your visuals are great--CRAZY good mapping. It certainly looks like a professional game, which kind of blows me away since it's at least mostly rtp.-You can't dress up rtp audio, though. The musician in me wanted to hear some new tracks, but the ones you chose fit the mood of the game for the most part.
-The town sections seemed to be the most thought out in terms of gameplay. I like the investigative bit, but I kind of wish it were more complex. Most of the time, you're pretty much led from spot to spot. The part with the blacksmith was the only possible stumbling point, but the fact that he stopped hammering was a great auditory clue to make me talk to him--I went right to him. So, while I'm glad I never felt stuck for the wrong reasons, I would have liked to feel stuck for the right reasons, you know, like how it's kind of fun to get stuck on a puzzle since it makes figuring it out feel more rewarding.
-I wasn't really a fan of the story and the dialogue. Of the two main characters, the dragon dude pretty much just goes with the flow--there wasn't much dimension to him. Thaena felt uneven; most of the times she was all business, but then some of the dialogue options had fourth-wall breaking humor (do you even lift, the Princess Bride reference, etc.) that didn't really mesh with her character outside of the dialogue options. She did make a joke about the town upon entry, but, if she's a smartass, this character trait should probably be reenforced more often.
-The story also didn't really offer her anything as a character. Besides solving the mystery, what does Thaena gain from the events? How does she grow or at least change as a person? I don't know if the story was a good conduit for her to change, and, without change, she's not a very engaging character.
-The gameplay decisions in the battles seemed like they could have spent longer in the planning stage. Because your party is limited, your battle options are also limited, and battles basically consisted of determining a weakness for an enemy type and then using it repeatedly. The boss was the same, only with some potion use thrown in. I didn't beat the chimera--didn't realize I needed to grind that early.
-The game forces you to grind, which you generally want to avoid. There are ways to make grinding less painful--such as streamlining battles or offering interesting progression systems--but your game seems to actually penalize the player when they're grinding. The stronger enemies that are worth more experience are further into the level and the characters have no healing magic, so there's no cost-effective way of recovering life while grinding; so, when you're getting close to death, you have to trek back through the forest, rest at the inn, and then trek back. Worse, unless you stockpile antidotes--which isn't cost effective--if you get poisoned you'll have to make that same trek, and some of the better xp mobs just happen to have a poison all ability. The poison itself seemed like a weird design choice. I think it might have just been included because poison is so prevalent in RPGs, but, considering the small scope of your game, you could have removed it.
Anyway, I think the main thing is that you should try to empathize with the player a bit more. When balancing, ask yourself what it's going to take for the player to be able to overcome this obstacle, and, if it's going to take a certain amount of work, think about how you can make that work fun. Too, make sure to spend more time in the planning stages, both with the story and the design. I realize that, for this competition, time was definitely a valuable commodity, but, for future games, that early planning may seem like you're not making progress, but it's absolutely crucial to making the game that's perfect for your vision. Your visuals show that you can make professional quality work, so you just need to apply that to the game at large. Good luck on the contest; I'm looking forward to seeing your future projects.
