In this game you wander around the world map. visiting towns and dungeons, and fighting monsters in turn-based combat viewed from first-person perspective, much like in Dragon Quest games. You'll have two parties at your disposal, and will be able to switch between them at any time. One party is the Aquitallion, the "main" one, and the only one which can access plot-progressing areas. The other parties can be used for visiting dungeons and retrieving valuable items. At a certain point in the game, you'll also be able to build and to manage your own town.
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Tecmo's foray into JRPG land yielded Aqutallion - a.k.a Secret of the Stars, a Dragon Quest-like that more or less complies with the rules of the genre. In between a QoL-minded approach and plenty of creative moments (although one has to wait until the second half to find something memorable), its main 'feature' allows players to switch control between 2 parties - a system occasionally used for dungeon & loot access, but also a clear attempt at doubling the time spent grinding.
Poorly named items with effects you could never guess, a bland story, a bad encounter rate, limited inventory, and other problems all exist in this game. This game fails to compete with other RPGs from the SNES era, let alone multiple NES RPGs. This game doesn't impact the formula in any way, and instead makes a lot of mistakes that even the first few JRPGs handled better.