My first play through was casual but the second was much more in depth, i fought almost every optional boss in the game minus Huang-Long. This and the second game are probably the peak of megaten on the PS2. Even though nocturne and DDS1 were only a year or two apart, nocturne feels 15 years older in comparison. It's a really interesting creative work that doesn't get the attention it deserves for some reason when I would say that it's more palatable for modern RPG or JRPG players these days than nocturne, which got a "full" HD remaster not so long ago. You can absolutely power though every dungeon in this game and solve every puzzle yourself without a guide, when in noctutne it just confuses me how anybody was supposed to figure half of them out in the first place. This game is probably tied with the second one for my favourite game of all time and I'd love to be able to play it in actual HD some day.