Good afternoon, Soul Catapult! I wasn't sure if there was a better way to contact you, so I thought I'd just make a quick post in hopes that you'd see it. First things first, I beat the main game last night at thirty-three hours, and let me just say that this entire experience felt POLISHED. You need to pat yourself on the back because this is honestly better than anything Square Enix has put out in years - at least to me - and that's saying something since I've been a fan of the series from day one! Anyway, I'll leave my praise for the review I posted - which I should probably update since I've now completed the game - and instead move on to the reason why I contacted you. I found a few glitches/bugs during my playthrough, and since your game is, in fact, so polished, I thought you may want to know about them.
- It would appear that the Growth Egg doesn't work. Had it equipped on Leila, but she was leveling at the same rate everyone else was. I started keeping tabs on battles, and sure enough, her experience remained the same. I then wondered if the wording was off and you may have implemented it differently than in past games the same way you changed Level 3 Confuse, Level 4 Flare, and Level 5 Death to target stamina instead of levels, and I tested what the overall experience values of battle were. I did this with and without the Egg while battling a grouping of two soldieresses and a Lilith, but the values remained the same. I didn't pay as much attention to the weapon and spell growth, so that may be affected, too.
- Second bug I encountered was in the final chamber of Semitt Falls. I went back there after placing the Water Crystal there because a villager in Salamand mentioned tonberries dropping rare treasure. I wanted in on some of that "sexy loot" - I loved that line! - and returned, and while roaming through the caves/mines, I re-entered the last room after the mine cart ride. Well, once inside, I couldn't get out! I'm guessing the passageway wasn't coded since, during the first visit, you're automatically warped out. Fortunately, I had access to the Teleport spell and had plenty of ottershrooms and teleport stones, but otherwise, people would be trapped with no way out. I thought that was worth mentioning!
- This third one is more cosmetic than anything, and while it's not a big deal, it just looked somewhat silly. While fighting a bunch of the soldieress enemies in an attempt to steal another Brave Blade, I noticed that when attacking them multiple times with the Haste spell active, when one jumps in front of another to block her, they start bouncing all over the screen. Again, nothing game-breaking; just looks goofy! Wouldn't need to be fixed, but I thought I'd point it out!
- Does the spell Osmose work? I know FF II spells need to be leveled to become fully effective, but I'll admit, I stopped trying with Osmose because it never once did anything. Maybe it has to hit a certain level, but I wasn't getting anything at all, so I left that one alone.
- While fighting the Cherie enemies who cast Re-Raise, I'm not sure how this happened - and it happened more than once - but they would cast the spell and basically become immortal. I did THOUSANDS of damage to one just to test the theory, and it wouldn't go down! The eventual way I found to get around this without fleeing was to cast Dispel, but again, just thought I'd bring it to your attention!
If I come across anything else, I'll let you know, but for the time being, kudos again on crafting such a work of art! This game has just become a vital piece of the FF mythology to me, and that's saying something coming from a picky author of his own fantasy series! I just wanted to extend a true "thank you" for putting so much time into this, and again, I apologize if I should've posted this somewhere else! I'm not the most technologically savvy guy, so itch.io is somewhat foreign to me!
Have a great day!
Michael Verley, author on the Quivering Quill and Final Fantasy aficionado