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chuckroMullen and Leen are assigned by General Baal (Mullen's father) to an important excavation of the Sult Ruins, looking for traces of the Angelou civiliation. Meanwhile, Justin, a self-proclaimed "first-rate adventurer" is play-hunting for treasure with his friend Sue and her pet butterfly-thing Puffy. Little does he realize that the Spirit Stone his father left him is the real deal, and the key to the secret the military is searching for--a secret that will send him on a journey far across the sea.
If my notes are to be believed, I purchased this game around 2002. I tried a little of it not long after, was apparently unenthused, and put it on the shelf. When I first made my backlog list, I went through specifically looking for games that I never finished (or never started). This was a combination of completionist desire and wanting to get my money's worth out of the games that I'd purchased; and knowing that I occasionally wrote off games because I was in the wrong mindset when I first played them. (Wild ARMS 2 is the best example of that, which really turned me off when I first got it, but ended up being one of my favorites in the series when I revisited it and actually played through it.) Even now, I often have a hard time convincing myself to cull a game from the list without finishing it. I think in this case, having tried repeatedly to get into it and feeling like I was forcing myself to play it each time, I can say that I just don't like it. I just don't find it a pleasant gaming experience, and I have better things to do than spend 50 hours on it.
Story-wise, I get a Lunar-type vibe off of this, probably because the opening is silly and childish with the intent of moving into something more serious; and the characters are very clearly children. Which may be something that turns me off, because the first Lunar game was another game that simply could not hold my interest. (I tried playing three different versions of that at various times over the past decade-and-a-half, and never made it past the halfway point.)
The graphics are standard PS1-era "classy sprite-based 3D with rotating screens". I found it very hard to navigate, because the full rotation is really unnecessary but forced on you anyway, and there are a lot of areas that don't seem to have any good angles to see everything from. I think the PS1 era was a time of experimentation with rpgs that forced developers to realize just because you can do something doesn't mean you should--which is why the system also has a lot of really long (often really padded) jrpgs, and the PS2/DS era rpgs that followed opted for more postgame content and a reasonable-length main game, rather than cheap padding.
There's a long "start to slime" time, between when you start a new game to when you fight your first battle. (Though Dragon Quest 7 is still the undisputed record holder in that category, clocking in at over two hours.) After the opening segment, there are still a number of segments where you need to run around town, finding people and pointlessly fetch-questing before you can advance the plot or get to another dungeon. And remember, even the towns are hard to navigate because of the faux-3D 3/4-view that you need to rotate.
The battle system is a weird hybrid of action-rpg, as your characters run around and can get stunned by attacks, but whenever their turn comes up the game pauses while you enter an action. It's neither straightforward enough to be fast and enjoyable, nor complicated enough to be pleasantly tactical. It just makes battles needlessly long.
The character attributes don't seem to have as much "number inflation" as some other games, as you get relatively little additional HP and stats each level-up; though I didn't get far enough into the game to see how this affects the length and difficulty of late-game battles.
The inventory size is criminally small--each character is limited to a dozen items, including their equipment, consumables and plot items. There's a "stashing place" where you can hide a few extras, but this is not the sort of game where item-hoarding is feasible.
Overall: Every once and a while, I think I just need to declare that while a game might be "a classic" to some, it just doesn't appeal to me and I'm not going to get through it. The PS1 era was an especially rocky time for jrpgs, and not all of the attempts at innovation worked. At least for me, this was one of those cases.
If my notes are to be believed, I purchased this game around 2002. I tried a little of it not long after, was apparently unenthused, and put it on the shelf. When I first made my backlog list, I went through specifically looking for games that I never finished (or never started). This was a combination of completionist desire and wanting to get my money's worth out of the games that I'd purchased; and knowing that I occasionally wrote off games because I was in the wrong mindset when I first played them. (Wild ARMS 2 is the best example of that, which really turned me off when I first got it, but ended up being one of my favorites in the series when I revisited it and actually played through it.) Even now, I often have a hard time convincing myself to cull a game from the list without finishing it. I think in this case, having tried repeatedly to get into it and feeling like I was forcing myself to play it each time, I can say that I just don't like it. I just don't find it a pleasant gaming experience, and I have better things to do than spend 50 hours on it.
Story-wise, I get a Lunar-type vibe off of this, probably because the opening is silly and childish with the intent of moving into something more serious; and the characters are very clearly children. Which may be something that turns me off, because the first Lunar game was another game that simply could not hold my interest. (I tried playing three different versions of that at various times over the past decade-and-a-half, and never made it past the halfway point.)
The graphics are standard PS1-era "classy sprite-based 3D with rotating screens". I found it very hard to navigate, because the full rotation is really unnecessary but forced on you anyway, and there are a lot of areas that don't seem to have any good angles to see everything from. I think the PS1 era was a time of experimentation with rpgs that forced developers to realize just because you can do something doesn't mean you should--which is why the system also has a lot of really long (often really padded) jrpgs, and the PS2/DS era rpgs that followed opted for more postgame content and a reasonable-length main game, rather than cheap padding.
There's a long "start to slime" time, between when you start a new game to when you fight your first battle. (Though Dragon Quest 7 is still the undisputed record holder in that category, clocking in at over two hours.) After the opening segment, there are still a number of segments where you need to run around town, finding people and pointlessly fetch-questing before you can advance the plot or get to another dungeon. And remember, even the towns are hard to navigate because of the faux-3D 3/4-view that you need to rotate.
The battle system is a weird hybrid of action-rpg, as your characters run around and can get stunned by attacks, but whenever their turn comes up the game pauses while you enter an action. It's neither straightforward enough to be fast and enjoyable, nor complicated enough to be pleasantly tactical. It just makes battles needlessly long.
The character attributes don't seem to have as much "number inflation" as some other games, as you get relatively little additional HP and stats each level-up; though I didn't get far enough into the game to see how this affects the length and difficulty of late-game battles.
The inventory size is criminally small--each character is limited to a dozen items, including their equipment, consumables and plot items. There's a "stashing place" where you can hide a few extras, but this is not the sort of game where item-hoarding is feasible.
Overall: Every once and a while, I think I just need to declare that while a game might be "a classic" to some, it just doesn't appeal to me and I'm not going to get through it. The PS1 era was an especially rocky time for jrpgs, and not all of the attempts at innovation worked. At least for me, this was one of those cases.
