One of the most overrated RPGs of all time. In the past I had been fed up when playing Final Fantasy VI, a contemporary to this title, because up to the midway point there's really nothing of interest going on that you couldn't find on your average shonen anime of the time.

However, that title got better after I left it on hold for half a year and came back after the plot twist, while even after leaving this to come back after I regained my interest, I found the rest of the game to still be a childish adventure with average humor, archetypical characthers even though some get a bit fleshed out, and a time travel premise which automatically makes everything have no risk because the characthers can conveniently alter stuff on the past and come back to the future to solve everything.

To compare, Final Fantasy VI had a mid game twist where the world came to an end just as Lavos here makes it happen in one of the time periods. The game uses a time skip to propose how each characther you met spent time to give purpose to their lives after the catastrophe, and ultimately the message is that we can still try to better ourselves even if you can't go back to a time where everything was better.

What does "the best RPG of the 16 bit era" say about that? Well, the mute protagonist dies near the end of the game, and you can actually beat it without him. But the work allows you to resurrect him by way of a sidequest, so it automatically renders the impactful plot point worthless as it teaches the player you can go back to undo mistakes and not have to worry about time paradoxes. Why try to achieve something with what you have if you can give yourself the privileges back? Yes, the game uses this to comment that you made friends who stick up for you across the ages, but it doesn't justify the escapist nature of solving one's personal problems via altering the triggers (like Lucca stopping her mother's accident even though that was what made her interested in science: to make for healthier experiments. No, it doesn't make for a time paradox, the characther will still have passion for science even without her mother being incapacitated). Frog's story is the best of the bunch despite his clichéd knight personality because you can't revive his friend, even though it doesn't make his characther more complex than "I have the willpower to avenge him". Balthasar dedicating himself to complete the time machine even if he died is a really tragic bit of story which I wish the rest of the game had.

It angers me that just because this has more fun basic mechanics than FF6 (however FF6 is to me a more difficult and complex game to play), the fact it has multiple endings (no, I was bored by this and I won't play it again just to see them) and because average gamers looking for a simple story not to think about too much can reach this as an entry into the RPG mode of playing, it has been praised as the better of the two titles despite the fact it's so vanilla story-wise. Like FF6, great production values in graphics and soundtrack though.

Listen to this:
https://youtu.be/ZM9b9e_kwzI