Goal	Status
🏆 Finished game	✅Feb. 02, 2025
💯 Completionist	❌
📋 High Score	N/A
📺 Video	❌

Bonus Goals

Goal	Status
💫 108 Stars	❌
🫂 Best Ending	❌

Review

This is a great game. I've tried to go back and play many 16- and 32-bit JRPGs I missed out on at the time, and unless they have Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest in the name, I almost always bounce off. This one hooked me right from the start. The combat and storytelling are extremely efficient. It totally eschews the long cutscenes and interminable dialogue that defined the CD-ROM era. It keeps the game moving and rarely takes control from you. The moment-to-moment combat is a little mindless, but with dozens of characters you can potentially choose to form your party, keeping it simple was for the best. The strategy comes from party composition more than decisions you make in individual combats, but luckily the battles are very snappy and it's easy to skip low-level enemies. The scripted battles feel suitably epic and rewarding. I felt like my strategizing and party management paid off, I never felt overwhelmed or like I was steamrolling the boss encounters. Very nice balance.

Where the game bogs down a bit is in managing your characters, their equipment, and your base. There's a lot of tedious running back and forth to swap characters in and out of your party, equip them, drop their items off in storage, swap their magic crystals around, etc. As cool as it was building up the base over time, I wish the game offered a simple menu where you can take care of this stuff. I'm also a little annoyed that, having finished the game, I can't load my last save file and work on recruiting all 108 characters, because certain ones can be permanently missed if you don't recruit them at the right time. This is needlessly punishing and feels like it was designed to sell strategy guides. Luckily I'm not a completionist for its own sake, so it's just a little annoying. This is still a great game with mature storytelling and satisfying mechanics, and I'm very excited for the sequel, which I hear is even better.

Score

❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤

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