as far as the battle system, I recall making a CT like system in an rm2k3 game of me own several years back. it was all in game, no loading times. I just had it pop up a custom made menu, I think I had 'attack' 'defend' 'tech' 'item' and 'escape' or 'run'.
basically it looked like you were scrolling through an in game menu like talking to an npc. I had to manually draw up animations for all the attacks and techs, there were so many fork variables involved in order to keep things nonturnbased. I didn't really bother with excruciating detail for normal battles, I just ran up a script for 'normal encounters' and had it run that whenever the player got into one.
but in boss battles I went all out, with customized scripts for each boss. If character A did action X, then enemy A would do action Y, unless condition A were unfulfilled (say action X did not manage to get the enemy's health below 50%). if condition A were fulfilled (enemy hp below 50%) then enemy A would instead take action Z.
literally every possible permutation/decision the player could make, though I generalized items and techs a bit (all healing items and techs lumped into a category, all offensive items and techs lumped into a category)...so whether you used a potion or a phoenix down or some sort of 'heal all' tech the boss would interpret that as action X and act accordingly, regardless of the specific item that was used.
so if you guys make another game on the rm2k3 engine that sort of thing might be a possibility. playing through the demo I was honestly fine with the system used, it certainly allows for some killer custom techs (I'm pretty sure I couldn't do any double or triple techs because when you used them, the command 'player moves toward enemy' or w/e didn't work quite in the manner I wanted, depending on how far away the person would be from the enemy and the other guy doing the tech at the moment, I just had everyone automatically randomly walk around with some invisible walls set up in a given radius).
