Welp, I WILL say that once they finally said "It's shipping" it shipped and got here fast.
Only had time to fuck around with it for around half an hour, but some quick initial impressions:
It looks as good as I've ever seen a Genesis (cartridge) game look. Like, I didn't know the Genesis could display that many colors at once.
Music...well, for starters I think it's great that (1) it's got an optional CD soundtrack and (2) if you don't want to pay for it they have it up for you to burn it yourself. Judging entirely from the start screen and first town, they're talented amateurs; I like the choice of samples (good use of oboe) but it does come off a little generic and repetetive.
Far as pacing? Well, I think they made some 8-bitty errors in storytelling. I'm firmly of the opinion that an RPG shouldn't start with you wandering around town for half an hour gathering party members and equipment.
The dialog gets a little verbose in places, and there's a text crawl. It moves pretty fast -- and you can speed it up by holding a button on the D-pad, without the risk of accidentally hitting Next, which is nice -- but I still believe text crawls are an inherently awful idea and I can't begin to understand why they ever existed in the first damn place, let alone why they continue to do so.
That said, the dialog itself IS pretty solid; one of the lines made me chuckle, which is more than I can say for the entirety of Breath of Death 7, which is supposed to be a comedy. This is a game created by (1) native English speakers who (2) clearly love the genre but (3) can poke fun at its tropes without looking like they're trying too hard. The protagonists seem like charming goofballs. At a snap judgement I'd say it has a similar flavor to the GBA translation of FF5, which is of course a compliment.
The menus are slick, and you can save anywhere.
Haven't had time to delve into magic or combat but the guys in the training room make them sound like pretty interesting systems.
And the packaging is great. Nice plastic box like the old Genesis games; comes with a color manual, poster (mine was a little bent but I'm not too bothered), and stickers. Really good presentation and I have already showed it off excitedly to family.
That's it so far; don't know when I'll get back to it (still have Xenoblade to finish plus my Xbox is due in the mail today) but this is a pretty cool thing at first blush.