What is the crowd's opinion of Ahriman's Prophecy?

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Ahriman's Prophecy by Aveyond Studios (formerly Amaranth Games)?

You start your journey in the small town of Elden. There is an early sidequest where you retrieve a bow for one of the village girls. The combat was not turn-based, but real-time. It has blue speech bubbles. The starting village has a well with some chickens near it. One of the first main-story quests has you going to a blacksmith which is on the other side of the river in the small town (the path you described matches, and there's actually a screenshot on the product page that shows part of this path).

The first major town, Devinshire (not sure on spelling, been a bit since I played), has stone walls and kids near the entrance playing tag. One of the other characters that joins you along the way, Frederick Le Mew, is an animal shape-shifter, who can change into multiple forms, including a chicken. There is a wolf-man in the game (actually two but one of them is very, very much later on in the game) near the entrance to the village where you meet Frederick.

The studio that made this game recently moved all of their forums to Discord so I'm not able to get any other screenshots for you, but if you're interested in checking to make sure it's the right game, the game is free to download and play, and you should know if it's the right one after a few minutes of gameplay, judging by your descriptions here.

I suspect you're thinking of Ahriman's Prophecy by Amaranth Games/Aveyond Studios! Main character is a girl named Talia accompanied by her male best friend Devin on a quest to save the world... you run into a thief named Jack and can let him go (and get him in your party later), turn him into the police, or kill him.

Ctr+F 'Ahriman's Prophecy'.

No one play this one? Bloody fantastic, free to download RPG made on RPGMaker 2003. The most memorable game from my childhood that had me entertained for hours. Download Link for anyone interested.

I remember playing Aveyond a while ago and enjoying it. They are the same people that made the free game Ahriman's Prophecy which I also like.

The only thing I can say for Aveyond since I played it 8 years ago when I was like 14 is that it might be a bit slow compared to RPG's of today so it should be up your alley if you're looking for the old school experience.