I own the original cartridge and beat this back in the 90s. Not sure if I played through once or twice, but I believe I had the player's guide and grinded some of the rare drop gear. The most memorable part of the game was the dinosaur world where the character sprites were shrunken to show how big the dinosaurs were. This game was enthralling to me as a kid, combining familiar rpg mechanics with unusual and interesting scenarios.
Update 2021. Beat the game on emulator using a walkthrough, to the point of micromanaging each enemy and situation. Used the trick in the beginning to never get the sound stone to free up an inventory slot. I hoarded a lot of stuff but did not need to use as many recovery items as the walkthrough suggested and liberally used offense items. The early game was quite challenging and I died several times. The combat balance for much of the game was tight, with needing to prioritize certain targets, frequently use magic, and high risk of character death. This continued until I spent the time grinding for the sword of kings, which took so damn long that the characters leveled up excessively and the late game was a cakewalk. I distinctly remember grinding those gold starmen for the sword back in the day. It took a few hours and I had to leave the dungeon once to recover. Then I grinded more hours for Jeff's best weapon, beating the dungeon boss first so the enemies would flee so I always got surprise attacks. Finally I grinded a star pendant just before the final dungeon. Yes those psychic psychos were very familiar, I can only imagine how much I grinded them back in the day. Despite turbo mode it took over 200 kills and almost 2 hours to get the 1 pendant. I used auto battle for the first 130, then figured I should be killing the enemy that dropped it last. Close to 200 I stopped counting, and every character got to level 99 doing this. None of the other rare drop items were worth it and even the ones I got were unnecessary. In fact I would say the game is better when ignoring rare drops, and that the inclusion of such low drop rates is the worst part of the game; really hurts the challenge and sense of completion.
Ness got the star pendant, pixie bracelet, shiny coin and magicant bat. He mostly did attacks and healing. Occasional use of paralyze and nuke. I called my favorite thing Death because I knew it was going to be used for the nuke, and video gaming, sleep and sex would not be good nukes names. Favorite food was roast.
Paula got the sea pendant, goddess band, Saturn ribbon and holy fry pan. I never had trouble when she joined and did not go out of my way to level her up; the 2 free stuffed bears helped keep her alive. I was very impressed how much damage she did with melee attacks despite being a caster. She mostly used freeze and fire nukes as needed.
Jeff got the rabbit foot, cherub band, souvenir coin and gaia beam. I used big and multi bottle rockets to wreck most bosses, and the bazooka for his main attack until he got his best weapon. I used the slime generator a bit during the mid game, but none of the other tools. Did not seem any point to with the limited inventory. Even though the walkthrough recommended the neutralizer and shield killer for removing shields, being overleveled made shields irrelevant. He reminds me of Edgar in FF6, but crappier due to the limited inventory.
Poo got his full set of kings gear and used a mix of melee and nukes. He really did not come into his own until he leveled up a ton grinding for his sword.
The game's best aspect was the setting; the locations, situations, NPCs and dialogue. You can feel the care and polish that went into the game, especially when revisiting everyone during the ending. The same care and polish went into the rest of the game, except for the inventory system and unnecessarily long dialogues for simple things like shops and saving. While there is nothing wrong with having limited personal inventory for tactical effect in battle, it would need to be paired with an easy to access infinite storage. Not the ridiculous courier storage system here. Especially since I maxed out the storage, mostly with worthless plot items that could not be destroyed. There was really no excuse to not have a single infinite inventory, like Final Fantasy. And then the dumb condiment system because lets just make using restorative items take up even more inventory space when the biggest limiting factor in the game is inventory space. Still one of the best SNES jrpgs, but not at the same legendary level as Chrono Trigger and FF6.
9.0/10
