Instincts be damned, I bought another Kemco RPG. The trailer looked a bit more high quality than their other titles, and battles were giving me Phantasy Star, so I couldn't resist. I know there's a post game and a second ending, but I would guess I'm about halfway through, so here are my first impressions.

• It's a Hit-Point RPG, but it's a good Hit-Point RPG.
• Pixel graphics and portraits look nicer than titles like Asdivine Hearts.
• Battles turned out to not be as good as Phantasy Star, more like early Dragon Quest, but fun enough.
• The storyline is full of tropes and story beats lifted from other games, but it's shockingly engaging. Like it's almost there, just needed a bit more time in the oven and in the localization department.
• There's dumb, unnecessary romance stuff, but it is SO REFRESHING to play one of these Kemco shovelware RPGs where the player party isn't a freaking harem. I think it even passes the Bechdel test!
• The music is excellent and the enemies are cool (and definitely do feel like Phantasy Star), but as usual with Kemco, there just isn't enough of it. I'm about 16 hours in and I can count about 10 different tracks? At this point in Final Fantasy 6, there were close to 40. Palette swaps are fine, but the game really needs more different enemies.
• Towns are small and all nearly identical, NPCs are virtually non-existant.
• NPC variety is severely lacking, there are maybe 3 different sprites.
• Dungeons are fine. There aren't any puzzles and the lengths feel okay, they're different enough, but something to engage you, whether it be traps, puzzles, someone to talk to, would have been appreciated.
• The game feels so weird because you move VERY FAST. And it's like the world and random encounters weren't calibrated for it, so every locale moves like a blur, and you're running into battles a lot.
• No overworld exploration, just dots on a map like a strategy game. Which is fine, but it means there are no fun secrets to discover.