Beat but did not complete everything optional. This was not a typical Jrpg because the difficulty was brutal and all 3 party members were monks with combat requiring specific combos of button presses, like Sabin's blitz, or Zell etc. My very 1st battle lost 50% hp and took several turns to win. Jesus christ, I had to use a healing item after just 1 fight? It was not looking good, but I soon discovered that was a special enemy type called Seru, that the normal random battle enemies were a little easier, and that there was infinite free healing at home. And once I progressed the story slightly the main guy got his special magic arm thingy that allowed learning magic from those tough enemies. Their nukes were a large part of the reason they hurt so much. The combat system in this game was very intricate. The characters had separate attack stats for each arm and the legs, plus separate defense for upper and lower. They could perform a series of attacks each turn choosing different combinations from all 4 limbs. The damage depended partially on equipment, so equipping a weapon made the corresponding arm attacks hit harder while boots made leg attacks hit harder. Some enemies were immune to certain attacks, like fliers avoiding low kicks and small enemies avoiding high. But this did not matter that much because the best way to do damage was to input specific combos that triggered special attacks called arts. Some of these were learned from npcs or books but you could also learn them through experimenting in battle. The more power hyper arts mixed in elemental magic and were only learned after major boss fights. There was also a hidden ultimate art that required max AP and attack slots. All arts required AP, which built up from defending (called spirit) and from taking damage. Spirit also increased the number of attack slots for 1 turn only, which allowed longer combos and was required for the ultimate art. This was probably the best implementation of the traditional defend command that I have ever seen. There was a lot of nuance around how often to defend since it also boosted offense, and characters without enough AP to perform arts did lousy damage. AP carried over between battles though. I most often attacked during random battles while only using the cheapest arts because it was efficient when the characters could kill an enemy in 2 or 3 attacks. Sprinkle in the occasional spirit. Tougher fights and bosses seen me spirit before attacking, and since healing was often needed, the characters would end up staggering their spirits so that someone was defending every turn. Many bosses had telegraphed ultimate attacks that would wipe the party if everyone was not defending, reminding me of those all sentinel moments from FF13. Arts could be chained together using the inputs of 1 for the next so there were 1 or 2 optimal chains for each character that were the best way to do damage outside the ultimates. The inputs required for each art were displayed during battle and the last input series for that number of attack slots was saved (so it remembered both normal and post spirit), but switching to different combos required inputting everything again. Like if I didn't have enough AP to pull off the ultimate art I had to entirely input something cheaper, then input the ultimate again when AP was high enough. I wished it saved a list of favored input chains to choose from. Even without having to input combos every attack, every turn of combat took a lot of button presses, but at least holding down the button worked. I did change the battle menu in the options away from the default because it seemed to require fewer presses. The other major battle system was magic, which required killing specific enemies for a chance of learning their spell. It was more like summoning than magic because of the long unskipable cutscenes that showed the enemy creature casting the spell for you. As if I was not already sick of that shit from FFs 7 and 8. Like sure watching it once is cool, but after that I just want the battle done asap. On top of that each spell leveled up with use, so we are back to the travesty of a magic system in FF2. Thus I completely ignored offensive spells except for 2 tough bosses that required me checking a walkthrough. Near the end while reading about the spells I learned that after leveled up they also did stat debuffs, like lower attack for fire. It didn't work on the final boss though. No idea if it worked on previous bosses but I guess it could make the game a little easier to have each character grind different low level spells just for the debuffs. I focused on the 3 healing spells and it was awesome that they leveled up from being used from the menu outside combat.

So back to my playthrough, the beginning events were completely unexpected. They built up him going on his 1st coming of age hunting trip so that I expected something to happen outside during that to kick off the adventure. He had a love interest at home but there will be a girl in the party so I wondered how that will play out. Then I stepped outside to begin the adventure and... oh God is this how slow the overworld movement speed will be for the entire game? Fuck sakes. I mean it did help the sense of immersion, making the world feel huge and places very far away. I'd rather get stuff done faster than be immersed though. The map was excellent and I loved how explored places were labeled, but there was nothing at all to find outside of those obvious towns and dungeons. I also loved the post apocalyptic feel of the game where almost every new town was a dangerous dungeon until the next tree was healed to cleanse the poison from the area and the people returned from being essentially zombies. It had a very Soul Blazer feel of going out and rebuilding the ruined world 1 town at a time. I also liked how the story and random npc dialogue went into the trauma caused by some people being hostile "zombies" for 10 years who did not age nor have any memory during those years vs the people who survived normally. The beginning town was not the only safe place in the world. Soon enough control switched over to the girl where she had her own mini adventure while being power leveled by a guest talking wolf. Not quite Wild Arms or DQ4 but still a nice touch. When both characters linked up they fought the 1st boss, which was so brutal that I used every healing item I had found thus far. Not long after this the 3rd and final guy joined the party and despite seeing him in the opening movie I had no idea he would be in the party until the moment he joined. No mini adventure for him. Instead he started at level 1 with no equipment to buy and was dead weight while the others power leveled him. Good thing both had healing magic. Once I completed that chapter and he finally got his arm thing to learn magic, he finally became an asset rather than burden. Only 1 more dungeon and major boss before I moved to the 2nd chapter and the 1st difficulty spike that made me check a walkthrough.

The 1st town in this new country was infested and to heal it required beated a plant looking boss called berserker. The game had been brutal with both regular enemy and boss damage since the beginning but this new boss was on a whole other level. His normal attack almost 1 shot so I needed multiple characters healing. Worse once his hp became low he began using an ultimate untelegraphed attack that hit everyone for more than their max hp. Ok wtf, what happened to the fair and sensible "boss is charging up a powerful attack for next turn"? I tried several times but was not even able to consistently get to the big nuke. Walkthrough said to use confuse magic and that there was a safe town with new shop a little further. So I went there to buy a few upgrades but could not afford everything. This game was very tight with money and equipment was expensive so I cheaped out and rarely bought upgrades until the end. I then grinded until the hero and girl used all their mana on confuse and guy used his on healing since he did not learn confuse. I later learned in the walkthrough that each character had 1 hated element and that his was dark. Not sure if that affected chance of learning spells but it did kinda seem like it. The girl was wind and hated earth while the hero was fire and hated water. So after that grind session my strategy for the boss was to attack 1 turn then have both cast confuse the next. This made the boss do nothing, giving me plenty of time to heal up. It also prevented him from doing that big nuke. I guess the scripting broke if the boss was unable to act when the low hp trigger occurred. Most of the game proceeded smoothly after this as my team was owning combat. I learned what each character was good at and gave them equipment and stat up items to specialize their roles. The girl was fast and did the most damage so I made her the core dps. Priority went towards her weapon and boots, she got all attack up boosts as well as most hp and defense to offset her weakness, and I used up her mp healing from random battles to save the guys for bosses. The hero was balanced Jack of all type, while the big guy was slow, consistently did the least damage, and had the best magic stats. Ironic that the heavy bruiser type was more of a mage. I gave him general support accessories like + gold, + item drops, less encounters, and less ambushes, then for bosses gave him speed up, less mp cost, and defense up. He got all the speed and int items and most of the max mp up. Despite having those gold and item drop accessories on for so long and hardcore cheaping out on equipment (the girl was using her 1st armor from the beginning for most of the game) I was not able to afford all the best shop equipment near the end of the game. Before that the next walkthrough check was at Sol where there was a riddle about chests not being hungry. What am I supposed to put something in the chests I looted? The walkthrough told me it required the ridiculously expensive bread sold at the bakery here and that the best way to get it was fighting in the arena. I bought the life grail accessory for passive hp regen, did the arcade fighting mini game a few times to get the dance club card and enough points to enter the arena. Then did the beginner tournament twice so I would have enough points left over to enter later. Soon after this the hero got a big sword with very high attack power but it took up extra attack slots so it ruined his combos. Rather than do chains I had him alternate between normal sword attacks and a hyper art. The next problem came when each character had to solo a boss, and Gala had the most trouble surviving. I had to swap his accessories and make sure to spirit every 3rd turn for the big attacks. I should have bought defender chains from the beginning because they ended up being one of the best accessories. After this was a ridiculous time limit boss which I was not able to beat until checking the walkthrough to find out that earth magic even at level 1 was super effective. Luckily Gala had the spell so I gave him int boosting equipment. The rest of the game went smoothly until the final chapter.

Here back in the starting town was an optional super boss fight that had to be completed then. Apparently there was also a secret bees boss there earlier but the reward was only a stat up item. So this boss had to be soloed by the hero without using magic, and he was both faster and could kill in 2 hits. Defender chain was the way to go but I had not bought any and could not leave to get it, so I had to figure out something else. I tried with 2 lost grails (auto full life but breaks after) and the counter attack accessory. Counter attack was awesome because it forced the enemy to skip its turn. Using this setup I was able to survive for 8 turns doing about 1000 damage per turn. Close but not enough to win. I fooled around with buff potions and noticed they stayed around after being revived. So I chugged all my wonder potions which buffed all stats to the point where damage taken was lowered enough that I could use a full healing item every 2nd turn. It also tripled my damage so I won in only 3 or 4 turns of attacking. I then walked through all the towns looking for new dialogue (a few NPCs had minor new lines) until doing the 2nd last dungeon and boss. He could kill the girl in 1 hit and I ran out of my last free Phoenix items. I bought some then went to the final dungeon. Every fight here was against 3 Seru, all of which could do nasty hit all nukes. These fights could be deadly if all 3 did nukes and my ambush accessories proved invaluable. I didn't swap accessories around for the final boss and treated that attempt as scouting and loaded once someone died. I used walkthrough to find the hidden goblet accessory which permanently set AP to max. I gave it to the girl along with power ring and + art damage so she was hitting for 6k damage every turn. And that was not even her ultimate. The boss could still 1 hit kill her, plus he had a big hit all nuke and a telegraphed wipe unless spirit ultimate. At 1 point he spammed the nuke and I was not able to keep up with healing. 2 died and I was not sure if I could recover, but I managed. Probably should have equipped the light talisman which had a hidden resurrection spell. I pulled out of that wipe and beat the game. I chose the explore the world ending in which his green haired girlfriend went with him. It was interesting that 1 ending snubbed her to pursue romance with the party member girl. Not sure which girl would make the better partner since the graphics did not exactly make them attractive. Mei actually had a chest that was not flat and a much more mature personality while Noa had better graphics from battle, red hair, kicked ass, was a princess and her mom was definitely gorgeous. But only Mei and the hero really had any actual romance during the game. I decided not to bother with the magic side quests though it seems like the arm thing spells from learning every art could hit for big damage. I also did not do the dancing or fishing mini games even though there were decent rewards. Next up was the hardest optional super boss Lapis. It had about the same hp as the final boss but only 1 single target attack that way over killed plus was so fast that he always went 1st, and completely disabled magic. Not that magic would be able to keep up with that Insane damage. I put on 2 lost grails + speed ring on hero and used speed elixirs to make him and girl sometimes go before the boss. I blew my money on healing items and Phoenix, and had Gala use Phoenix on the hero every turn. This got me pretty far but was not enough so I put the light talisman and life armband on Gala and he could barely survive 1 attack now. Checking a different walkthrough later the boss was light element and light resistance worked on its physical attack. I could have bought 2 light resist accessories for the other 2 but I had already won. My strategy was the same only now Gala never died and the hero healed him occasionally. Girl always attacked, Gala always used Phoenix on the hero, while the hero used buff items, healing, Phoenix, or attacked. The reward from this fight was not useful. Next I wanted to beat the arena. Expert mode disabled items and equipment and the ony difficult fight was the dark ogre near the beginning who took several turns to kill but could kill the hero in 2. I went back to the old confuse strategy to give plenty of time to heal up after each attack. Then was the master level which disabled everything except accessories. The only workable combo was life grail, defender chain and wonder amulet (for status immunity). This challenge was about soloing some regular enemies and most of the bosses and I managed to make it to the last fight without much difficulty. I was not able to beat the last guy (who was the 4th last boss in the game) because his chance to hit was too high. I spent about 30 minutes doing nothing but spiriting hoping the math would work out and my hp would go up, but instead it slowly whittled down. Even while spiriting it only took 2 hits from his massive combo to offset the passive regen, so I would have died even faster if I had attacked. Maybe if I had given him all the speed, power and defense up items or leveled up higher he could reliably stay alive and win. All 3 were level 40 for the end.

I enjoyed this game even though it was a bit of a slog with difficulty tuned a little too high. The story, characters and setting were good but not spectacular. The combat system had a lot of depth but also required a lot of engagement. The major flaws were more lack of quality of life features that wasted my time while the game didn't really do anything amazing enough to offset those flaws.

7.2/10