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I'm confused about where to put this.  I've been working on this game for the better part of four years, and recently converted it over from VX Ace, with a name change, but the game is nowhere near finished, as I haven't even gotten the first chapter finished, let alone bugtested.  If this isn't the right place to post about my horrifically unfinished game, I apologize in advance.

In the year 2045, humans discovered a wondrous mineral that allowed anyone holding a piece of it to use Magic.  Its power and effects were shown to be tangible in laboratory conditions, but at this early point, no one had the foggiest idea how it could do what it did.  They just knew it involved concentrating on specific feelings – fear, rage, pain, joy, etc.  As we discovered more about the mineral we now called ‘Magicite’, its gaseous form ‘Mana’, its capabilities, and its limitation, we discovered we could store Mana inside our bodies.



Well, most of us could.



Those that could store mana in their bodies were referred to as mages, and regarded as the pinnacle of society.  The roughly 5% of us that couldn’t were given the derogatory name “muggles”, and treated as second-class citizens, even those with fantastic powers.  A few muggles, and even a few mages, tried to speak out against this, but to little effect.



In the year 2256, as if through divine punishment, humanity’s stupidity, with more than a small dose of irresponsibility, led almost directly to an event now known as the Great Magicite Disaster.  Very few documents of the specific events have survived, but in its wake, those supposedly involved in the catastrophe got together to form the World Protection Agency, with the purpose of preventing any similar catastrophes.



Between then and the year 2345, several factions came and went, mostly a response to the increasingly-unhinged nature of Magic itself.  Most failed to last more than a few years, but the most notable and long-lived was the New World Empire, a group of fanatics who claimed they sought nothing more than a world at peace with itself, but who were really no better than the other such factions.



Now, in the year 2345, the New World Empire has surfaced once again, this time with the explicit goal of a world without death, where no one would have to suffer the loss of a loved one.  What are their actual goals?  What will happen now?  And just how far unhinged will Magic get from here?
Let’s go and find out, shall we?

Text Wall incoming:



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Do not be fooled by the fairly standard, if complex, gameplay - this game has a lot of decisions that significantly affect the outcome of the game.  From character customization to dialogue trees, every decision matters.


Thanks to Yanfly's Class Change Core, each character has access to at least four classes out of a great many.  Which classes are available to which characters determines their specialties.  You may take up to two classes at once: a main class for stats, skillset, equipment proficiencies, and up to a single perk; and a subclass exclusively for skillset expansion.


Abilities are separated into four categories:

• Active abilities are the attacks and spells you will be using in combat, and always require a turn to use.
  
• Passive abilities are perks that always apply to your characters.
  
• Reaction abilities are perks that situationally apply to your characters.  The most common condition, or trigger, is low HP.
  
• Guard abilities are abilities that replace the character's Guard command.  These are risky to learn, as they may or may not retain the Guard's damage mitigation aspect.
  

To learn a new ability in a given class, you must have the required amount of Class Points, or CP, in that class to spend on that ability.  Expect to be grinding for CP a lot in this game, as you're not guaranteed to get enough CP per battle to learn much worthwhile in any reasonable time span.


Battles take place in an alternate screen.  Many players are already intimately familiar with this battle layout.  Yanfly's Active Time Battle System provides a clear indication of how fast the battles would go in real time, while still giving the player the time he or she needs to make strategic desicions.


Your party members are key to your protagonist's survival.  As such, I've implemented Yanfly's Party System and Actor Party Switch plugins.  While the protagonist can't switch out mid-fight, everyone else can.  Feel free to use this feature to create advantages for yourself.  You'll need every bit of it.


Thanks to Yanfly's Row Formation plugin, there are two rows in combat.  In the front line you have full range of attacking, but are also very vulnerable to melee-range attacks from your enemies.  In the back line, you can't use anything melee-range at all, but you also can't be targeted by your enemies' melee-range attacks.  You can switch between these rows without consuming your turn, but once you've switched rows, you can't switch back until you've actually used your turn.


Speaking of turns, you will also have Casting Time to worry about, since this is Yanfly's ATB I'm using.  For the most part, your physical attacks will only have one tick of CT.  Your magic isn't so lucky, as even the fast spells can be outpaced by a basic physical attack.


Thanks to Yanfly's Damage Core and Armor Scaling plugins, the defensive stats will not matter as much in the early game.  Expect that to gradually change over the course of the gameplay.  As an additional point, the LUK stat now affects accuracy, evasion, and critical hits, rather than status infliction - go nuts with that.


While the battle system is fairly standard, experience is given out to everyone regardless of whether they're alive or dead.  To compensate, you won't gain EXP from anything except boss battles.  To compensate for that, everything except most bosses gives out CP.


Beyond that, the game has a great many references to Final Fantasy, Etrian Odyssey, and others.  Most of these are obvious, but a few are more obscure.  See what all you can find!

Ctelin "Ctel" Ajira



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Bio



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A very irritable individual, Ctel is about the last person you would expect to see working at a Protectors Guild.  He would rather break the law than deal with the delays that come from said law.  This is not helped by the fact that his parents' deaths were basically permanent because a shop clerk adhered too strictly to laws, and refused to give him a Phoenix Down.  That being said, because of his healthy disdain for the law, Ctel is more than capable of getting any job done quickly.


Ctel is seen as a loner by most, but his closest friends know better.  He just needs someone who he can rely on to help him through his toughest times.  And his life is about to get very tough.

In recognition of his crappy constitution, Ctel has built himself as a hardcore glass cannon - able to dish out a world of hurt, but unable to take any punishment in return.  He specializes more in magic than melee, but thanks to an unorthodox dual-wielding style, he fairly competent in both.  Ctel's skill ranks fall mostly under Combat Enchantment, Black Magic, Red Magic, and Planar Magic.

• As a Battle Mage, Ctel can utilize powerful combat enchantments that, though they take time to set up, encase his blades in elemental energy.  This serves to situationally power up his magic as well.  Additionally, Ctel can learn enchantments that bounce certain spells back at their casters.
  
• As a Black Mage, Ctel specializes in applying pressure to keep opponents on the defensive.  Between offensive buffing, elemental damage, and various status ailments, Black Magic is hard to match.  Ctel can further power up his magic at the cost of losing HP over time.
  
• As a Red Mage, Ctel specializes in dishing out lots of damage in a brief stint.  Because the Red Mage's spells are designed more with speed in mind, his mana pool runs out very quickly, forcing him to take time to refill it.  Its spell set also relies heavily on Black Magic and White Magic
  
• As a Planesweaver, Ctel utilizes the power of the Forces of Genesis, the creators of the Material Plane.  Though it is but a pinhead sample, it makes him and incredibly varied opponent.
  
  Ctel's Destruction affinity allows him to dish out lots of damage and status ailments.  He can even temporarily destroy hindering aspects of himself and others, serving as a downplayed buffer
  
• Ctel's Order affinity allows him to mess around with his enemies' heads, blocking large portions of incoming damage, redistributing resources, and even performing limited time manipulation
  

[*]Ctel also has some lesser ranks in White Magic.  While he abandoned the White Mage in favor of the more offense-heavy alternatives, he stayed in it long enough to get what he needed for the full Red Magic set.

[*]Though sparse, Ctel also has enough ranks in Geomancy to reliably draw environmental mana from his surroundings regardless of local concentrations.  As long as he can spare the time, and isn't in a manastarved locale, he doesn't even need an Ether to restore MP.

Ctel is overall one of the best units in the game for damage output.  Between Red Magic, Black Magic, and Destruction Magic, it will be very hard for his enemies to do much to him before he utterly wrecks them.

Ctel has the lowest defensive average of any character in the game.  This matters not-so-much in the early game, but in the later segments, expect Ctel to be dying extremely often.

Bio



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Max is the kind of studious voice of reason who could even get Ctelin Ajira to listen to him.  Perhaps this is why they get along so well.  Regardless, Max is the main reason Ctel survived his time being taught by a Warden.


As a roommate, Max knows Ctel decently well.  In fact the two are close enough that they can joke together about pretty much any topic and not get offended.

Max is a hardcore Combat Medic, able to dish out some damage while, at the same time, keeping his allies in top shape.  He has many ranks in Medical and Combat Alchemy, Offensive Magitech, White Magic, and Geomancy

• As a Geomancer, Max can manipulate the environmental mana in his surroundings.  Its effects are varied, but each effect is situationally amplified by the terrain.  He can also perform some powerful battlefield-wide effects that can potentially sway things in your favor.
  
• As an Alchemist, Max is able to use items more effectively than others.  His ranks in Medical Alchemy, with some small help from his Geomancy, allow him to mass-administer healing items in gaseous form for full effects.  Taking ranks in Combat Alchemy allows him to exert an offensive presence as well.
  
• As a Machinist, Max can better utilize a special kind of machine, equipped to be powered with Magicite, are thus commonly known as Magitech.  On top of various damaging effects, Max's Offensive Magitech ranks facilitate better understanding of how these machines work, and how to counter enemies using them.
  
• As a White Mage, Max can heal his allies from the brink of death.  Besides having powerful holy-elemental attacking spells, the White Mage specializes in curative magic, and is incredibly useful for those moments when you want to save on items.
  
  Warning: due to the nature of magical healing, trying to use White Magic to heal the Undead is not recommended.
  

Max is an amazing healer.  With access to White Magic and Medical Alchemy, he could potentially be the best healer the game has to offer.  But for those who just want another damage-dealer, Max still has enough power as a healer to keep everyone else alive for their jobs.  What's more, get enough CP for Mana Tap, and Max can basically spam all the White Magic he wishes.

As an Alchemist, Max is very high-maintenance.  If you specialize in Alchemist, you will burn through a lot of items very quickly.  And since the stuff you find just wandering around won't sustain this pace of consumption, expect to spend a whole lot of money on healing items if you intend to run Max as an Alchemist.


Similarly, Machinist might or might not be useful, depending on how much Magicite you have in your inventory.  Magicite is not buyable for a good chunk of the game, so you will have to make do at times.

Bio



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Tai's social life was always prolific, almost to the point of insanity.  How she still found time for studies is beyond most of her friends.


It's not clear why Tai is as intelligent as she is, but in any case, it's not a comfortable topic for her.  She has been the target of many pranks thanks to her reputation as a nerd.

Tai is about as different from Ctel as it gets.  Where Ctel is centered around killing things quickly, Tai instead focuses on keeping allies alive by being the best damn tank she can be.  Her main ranks are in Blue Magic, but she also has ranks as Paladin, Ark Knight, and Berserker.

• As a Blue Mage, Tai is capable of using enemy abilities as her own.  This makes Tai a very good debuffer sub damage-dealer.  However, she is, by necessity, a quick-thinking tank, as she learns most of these abilities by taking hits from each such ability, and reverse-engineering the method behind the effects.
  
• As an Ark Knight, Tai specializes only in melee.  However, Ark Knights are traditionally combat pragmatists, and so have a variety of useful abilities.  Ark Knight Tai is no different, able to strategically reduce stats, draw aggro from physical attackers, and even heal allies.
  
• As a Paladin, Tai hyper-specializes in defense.  Running off of the tradition of Paladins defending the weak, Tai has taken sufficient ranks already to be able to intercept most single-target attacks by sacrificing a turn.  Train her further, and she can become even more durable against physical attacks!
  
• As a Berserker, Tai sacrifices all notion of defense in favor of overwhelming physical power.  She can allow her rage to take over her bodily functions, powering her up significantly, at the cost of her longevity - death approaches fairly quickly after that.  High ranks in Unarmed Combat are recommended.
  

Tai is probably the single best mitigation tank in the game.  Between her Paladin passives, Cover, and her Ark Knight debuffs, there's not much that can scratch her.  Furthermore, as a Berserker, a turn or two of setup is all she needs to be a mind-blowingly powerful physical attacker.

As a Blue Mage, it takes forever to get the Learning ability to spread that perk to other classes.  Until then, you will likely be maining her as Blue Mage, complete with the subpar RES.


Maining as a Berserker, her defensive stats are utterly horrible.  She will likely run into the same issues that Ctel does.

Bio



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The only son of a powerful Warden, Dante is probably the last person you'd expect to fail a course.  But he set himself up to fail when he tried taking an introductory course taught by one Sera Strider.  


He didn't even make it past the first week before he had to drop that class.

Dante is probably the most physically-oriented of Ctel's close friends.  He took more ranks in melee classes like Invoker, Spell Fencer, and Battle Mage than he even considered for magic-based classes.

• As a Battle Mage, Dante can utilize powerful combat enchantments that, though they take time to set up, encase his blade in elemental energy.  This serves to situationally power up what little magic he has as well.  Additionally, Dante can learn enchantments that bounce certain spells back at their casters.
  
• As an Invoker, Dante specializes in combat stances.  Each stance provides different advantages, but each is incredibly useful once activated.
  
  As an additional perk, it's called the Invoker for one reason: the class allows the fighter to draw power straight from the equipped weapon for a powerful magical attack.  This draws from the weapon's mana pool, rather than his own.
  

[*]As a Black Knight, Dante can use low-to-mid-tier Black Magic to apply pressure.  He serves a similar role to Ctel's Black Mage class, but with additional competence in melee combat.  Since he's the one who taught Ctel how to overclock his Black Magic, Dante can do the same, again at the cost of losing HP each turn.

[*]As a Spell Fencer, Dante specializes in crippling opponents.  This class's unusual spellsword style leads to some interesting effects, most of which are specifically geared against specialist-mages.  As such, Dante as a Spell Fencer is an excellent mage killer.

Between Battle Mage, Spell Fencer, and Invoker, Dante has the power to become a very versatile physical attacker.  Because of this, he bypasses most anti-magic measures by default.  Additionally, since Black Knight has excellent CON, he has access to a magic class with decent survivability.

Because of his specialization as a physical attacker, he is at the mercy of his own accuracy.  The Blindness status is very crippling to him.


As an Invoker, he can consume his weapon's mana pool for some devasting effects.  But if he overuses this, he loses the weapon he was using to cast the spell.  This is especially a problem when multitargeting, as this accelerates the rate of mana consumption.

Bio



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As a lifelong muggle telepath, Zoë was slow to figure out that speech was a necessity.  She had been a reclusive individual ever since she figured out she was reading people's minds.  Her power even got her into trouble after she started experimenting with it.


She looks far younger than she actually is.  This, along with most of her other issues, comes from the fact that she can't turn off her telepathy - her power was consuming so much energy, that her body's physical maturation was noticeably slowed down.

Zoë is kind of a generalist.  Being a muggle psychic makes her incredibly unusual, even in the context of this setting.  Because of the amount of energy her power consumes, she is generally sluggish, so she won't be able to act very often in combat.  However, regardless of which class she takes, she does have a huge amount of status effects at her disposal.

• As a Telepath, Zoë can shut down opponents pretty quickly.  She specializes in status infliction, and can quite brutally shut down opponents before their next action potentially with just one ability.  However, she is also quite easily shut down by simple resistance to psychic effects.
  
• As a Kineticist, Zoë specializes in physical damage.  Since she uses her powers for this, most of her attacks don't focus on STR.  Because the effects are not inherently psychic in nature, they are also harder to stop.  However, her defense suffers massively in this class, so she can't take hits as well.
  
• As a Nomad, Zoë specializes in manipulating time and space.  This makes her versatile in combat, able to dump attacks onto others by spatial distortion, kick enemies out of combat altogether, and even mess with turn order.  However, her lack of damage output is most noticeable here.
  
• As a Seer, Zoë specializes in messing with events.  She can make enemies just not act, link the fates of two or more enemies, and even kill those who kill her.  However, the Seer's lack of strictly-damaging abilities makes it very hit-or-miss as far as utility, as the situations where it would be most useful may be few.
  
• As an Egoist, Zoë specializes in manipulation of the body.  She is amazing at status buffing, able to shut off your pain receptors, hyperfocus your mind's functioning on combat, and invert the effects of poison.  But, again, there's not as much direct damage as most players would prefer.
  
• As a Shaper, Zoëcan manipulate the environmental mana into Magicite.  This is incredibly useful for making shields, with which she can, to a point, entirely block all forms of direct damage.  It's also useful for mass status infliction, as she can bind your legs in Magicite, and even crystallize your mana pool inside you!
  

Zoë is a major jack of all trades, capable of a great many things.  Unlike most examples, she can do each job pretty damn well, overall.  Her unusual focus on status infliction, however, makes her an asset - not many enemies are resistant to status effects, and even fewer are outright immune.  What's more, her buffing power as an Egoist makes her an amazing all-around support character.

Unfortunately, she suffers from a big problem to balance her out: she is sluggish.  Her AGI caps out at below average, and the issue is further exacerbated by maining her as a Shaper.  Coupled with the fact that she has no passive way to counter the Unbalance status, this makes her one of the hardest characters to use to full effectiveness.

Bio



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As a member of the World Protection Agency, Sera Strider was easily one of the youngest ever to become a Warden.  With her particular speed-focused combat style, it's not at all hard to see why.  She is regarded as one of the most skilled Wardens of her time.


As a teacher, though, her students are more fearful than respectful of her.  Her sink-swim teaching style very quickly earned her the title of Teacher from Hell, especially when her introductory course flunked 80% of the students who entered it!

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In the years following the death of Ctel's parents, Gerald Reacher took after his grandson, Ctel, as if he were the son he never had.  Naturally, Reacher mourned the death of his daughter...but he also had other, more important things to focus on.


As a former Warden, Reacher garnered quite a reputation as a man to be respected, and would always favor the Good option over the Lawful one.  At 80 years of age, while Reacher has mellowed over the years, he still maintains a powerful presence.

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The current implementation of Rune is horrendously abusive.  I may nerf it in the future.

Gate Crystals are your save points.  There will be 3 more types of them to keep in mind.

I don't know why I brought up the party swap menu here, with this character.