A distinct RPG among so many genaric ones.
I liked the way special skills could be used, as in I can boost and then doubleStrike for X4 damage, but that the skills could only be recarged by save points or leveling was not to my liking.
I liked the art style and the victorian era theme it had going on. Music was good but a bit bland, however you already did so well on the art and design so it would be rather demanding to ask you to make an absolutly perfect soundtrack.
I think that perhaps if you made it so that you can do an action that charges up those points it would feel like a more complete skill set. I think it would be neat if, say, when you chose the guard action you choose one skill to recharge by one point. This would keep boss battles from being a short burst of damage from the player followed by lots of little attacks till it dies.
If you do implement something like the guard-skillcharge maybe make a version that doesen't give a skill point but a def bonus next round, maybe not as strong a def as the round you block though. I would not recomend a (smaller block)-skillcharge though as while it might be balincing it would be less enjoyible that way I think.
Perhaps also have monster give some kind of tell for when they do big attacks so you know when to use block too, that way you arn't just making a bet on if they use a big attack or not.
I think being able to tell how much (or approximatly how much) health the enemy has would be helpfull as well, maybe make a skill that works for 10 rounds or something.
Also, while random encounters are ok, I would prefer if you could see, and perhaps evade enemy groups as you walked around, maybe even be able to sneak up on em and get a bonus round or something.
I might also have seen a glitch where right after the shadow car I saw a room with a hooded guy (Possibly the merchant) for a second and then, well this might be a spoiler so I won't say but I think either I skipped a car or that I just had an almost immediate transition thing.
Also getting exp and earning items feels a bit less rewarding if at each chapter you are given preset stats and eqipment. Maybe have some kind of code given at the end of a chapter that is used at the beginning of the next, though you will need to be carefull how you implement this so that people don't abuse it and get stuff they didn't earn, capping exp for each chapter would probibly be a good idea too so people cannot get codes for amounts of exp that are way too high, letting people know what the cap is would be a good idea if you do this.
Maybe when you finish the series you could also put them all together and eliminate the need for codes, but that would probibly be unnessisary work and very likely over the NG size limit.
Still this was a great game and I enjoyed it, gave it a 4.