It's a pretty tough genre for an indie developer (if you aim for quality).

JPCT-AE:
+ free
+ nice, neat feature set
+ best support I've ever seen for anything, patches are often available within hours or even minutes of a bug report (yes, it's crazy)
+ lighweight / full control
+ performant
- Android and PC only; I don't think Egon (the developer) has any plans to port to iOS

I don't really have a lot of experience with 3D modelling and have not used Android studio for JPCT, so I can't answer those questions.


Unity
+ multi platform (but you need Mac hardware to deploy to iOS device)
+ no setup code (but this minimal time saver can be neglected for anything but prototyping or very small projects IMO)
+ built in profiler
+ built in GUI stuff
+ nice integration of physics engine, if your game needs it
+ WYSIWYG editor (which is really only an advantage for protoyping IMO - I don't think any bigger projects make heavy use of the Unity Editor)
+ everyone and their grandma is using it (meaning there are a lot of answers online)

- not really free unless you don't care about a fat Unity logo at game startup
- really really heavyweight / limited control
- probably lower performance than JPCT, but I have no prove for that
- everyone and their grandma is using it (I am not a big fan of howling with the wolves, especially when it's about a commercial product)
- this may a personal thing, but in my opinion, Unity makes it too easy or tempting to write dirt-ugly code. It's not about the language (c# is fine), but about the overal structure of the system. As you do have previous coding experience, this is not too relevant, but I would not recommend anyone to start their programming career with Unity.

Players are really spoiled today, hmm? 
One alternative, albeit a rather time-consuming one, would be to automatically save on certain spots, e.g. entering or leaving a dungeon or town, talking to someone, winning a fight (and no enemies nearby) ...

Egon, the game's really impressive, especially for a solo project. There are limits on how much one man can do, especially with a small budget who also has a job, family and a whole engine to support. Half of that would be more than enough for most

Now for everyone reading this and using jpct for a while, I would say it would be fair if we, as a community, could give a little back to Egon for all of his work by collecting the money he spent on Naroth. E.g. 20 people give 25 dollars each, or 50 giving 10. Shouldn't be too hard I hope Please, guys, if you want to join in PM me.

Yeah, it's like a hundred times easier now for me. In hindsight, it was simply unplayable before. Enemy difficulty seems to be okay now, even if a little more reach for the sword would be nice
Don't know why the update took like 15 hours before it appeared for me, but that's Google Play.

Lol. I'll check it out. One tip for the play store: you should upload some screenshots in the tablet category to get rid of the stupid 'developed for phones'. They don't have to be actually made on a tablet; just reuse the same screenshots you used for the phone category like 99% percent of developers out there.
Also, I have seen one reviewer criticising the difficulty of the fights. Honestly, I was a little shocked how easily you can die on the first enemy as well. But it's a design decision and completely valid of course.
By the way, Pegi 18? How did that happen? I don't see any blood or guts... SO far
One more thing, do you really need permission for system settings? I think I have never seen it in a game and a lot of people may not like it (explanations in the store entry are usually not read). There are other ways to leave the screen on or minimize android buttons.

Aren't "inverted" controls (I'd say they are rather straightforward - up is up) the standard for everything that is not a flight sim? However. Having the option the change it is pretty much necessary for a lot of players I'd say.

Finally! Congratulations. First impression is really good, two questions though:
- Any way to invert the y axis on the right joystick? Its no flight sim
- Any specific reason why the movement with the left stick  is limited to 8 axis instead of being fully analog? Feels i little stiff to me! I could get used to it for sure, just interested why you made that decision.
I will give more detailed thoughts on the game after I played for a while, these two just for the moment.

I am actually pretty excited to hear that! We'll help to spread the word 

That's great. Can I out help with proofreading or anything else?

I don't like the permissions you require. Not at all. Text messages??
Also, I cannot see any real screenshot from the game, just some menu and selection screen.

Your game looks really nice, but you should definitely test your apps on as many devices as you can get your hands on, before releasing it (if necessary, emulate them).
I had some other problems on the Xperia Z tablet (1200x1920) : Buttons in the main menu only show the upper half of the text; tutorial texts are far too small, even on the 10 inch tablet (I cannot imagine how small it would be on a 5" Full HD Display.

I think i know what Egon's problem is. You obviously stop the camera on every touch event other than touch down. But when you leave the finger on the screen, you usually move it a little bit, therefore producing move events which stop the cam. I may be wrong but that's my impression.

Ok, I think I got it. The problem was that I - for a reason I do not remember - have always used the xAxis as "forward" in my game. So, the models are oriented in the wrong way for setorientation. I am changing this for the blasts.

I want a shot to point towards a certain target but it points in some strange direction.
Do you see any obvious flaw in my code?


vTargetPos.sub(vPlayerPos);  //to get direction vector
vTargetPos.normalize(vTargetPos);
vUp.set(vTargetPos.calcCross(VECTOR_LEFT));   // I do not care about the up vector, so I calculate an abitrary one
shot.setOrientation(vTargetPos, vUp);


As said, this does not work at all. Don't ask how I managed to finish my space shooter without figuring basic stuff like this out   
btw: "Direction" in setorientation means positive z-axis - right?