So, I've mentioned the idea in several places, and I think that - at least on the smaller communities like this one (I might hold off from announcing anything on larger ones for now) - I'm at a point where I can safely announce this now.
I'm officially working on a full-blown remake of this game!
It's going to be a very large project, it probably won't be finished for a long time. I had initially planned to use RPG Maker MV, but before I'd even so much as done the first few database entries I quickly realised it was going to be the major problems with VXAce all over again, specifically, that while it's far from impossible, the RPG Maker engines simply aren't very well suited to anything that deviates much from the default system.
So, instead, I'm making my own engine entirely from scratch. I'm developing it in Lazarus (which is pretty much just "Open-Source Delphi"; you'll probably recognize Delphi as what was used to make Lemmix and NeoLemmix). Likewise, all the graphical / music / etc assets will need to be custom made as well. My plan here is to just do low-quality, almost-placeholder-type ones while I'm working on it, and if / when I get to the stage that completion is inevitable, I'll look at replacing them with better ones - I might make them myself, or I might look at finding someone else to contribute, though either way it'll be original resources made specifically for this game. So far, I haven't written a single line of the actual engine yet, but the editor is coming along very nicely - database editing is almost complete (just missing AI scripts, common events, and some parts of enemy formations). Why did I decide to move to Lazarus now - quite simply, because it can produce cross-platform apps. I'm hoping for the finished product to be available on at least Windows, Mac, Linux and Android; possibly iOS too, but I'd have to get myself an iOS device for testing first.
To be clear - this isn't going to be "more or less the same game, just looks better" type remake like eg. Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy (nothing against N Sane Trilogy of course, it's amazing, it's just not an example of the type of remake I'm going for here). It's more a case of "a new game, but using the original game as if it were a rough draft". In particular, I want to greatly improve the storywriting standard, as well as integrate elements that I had in mind but ultimately didn't make it into the game (eg. the planned sidequest in Sysona that was blocked off by a "not yet available" message in early demos, but ultimately got culled altogether and the path that would have lead to it is no longer there in the final version). I also have several changes in mind for the levelling system - most notably, rather than EXP increasing your level which then determines your stats, EXP would just accumulate and the player could then spend it on directly upgrading stats. (I realise this could get tedious, so I plan to add some kind of option to let the game manage it automatically too. However, for those players who really want fine-grained control, the option would be there.)
As far as gameplay mechanics go, I'm pretty happy with the ideas I have in mind. However, writing is a much weaker point for me, so I'd be very interested to hear suggestions. I don't want to spoil the ideas I have in mind, which in turn means it might be harder to take suggestions as they'd have to be based off the original version rather than any revisions I have in mind (which there are a lot, since this is going from "create some excuse for a story to give the gameplay some context" to "actually try and have a good story"), but I'd still be glad to hear them - general ideas rather than specific points could still be pretty useful. (eg. "In this specific scene, Tara looks to the left, she should look to the right instead" isn't really useful because that scene might not even end up in the remake, or might look very different. "I feel there should have been more on Ivy's backstory" on the other hand would be a useful suggestion. Of course, feel free to be more specific, it's just a bit uncertain how useful it'd be.)