Like an old, ratty, moth-eaten security blanket from your childhood: cozy, comforting, and capable of mustering up a lot warm nostalgic fuzzies, but ultimately a little threadbare, leaving you feeling cold and a little bummed out. There’s a lot to like about this game—the pixel art, level design, and basic mechanics are all superlative—but the whole thing is hampered by the inert pacing, needless repetitions, dogshit writing, and some of the clumsiest storytelling I've ever seen in a video game (especially as it careens into a multi-car pileup of narrative convolution and interconnected "shared universe" building near the end). It doesn't help that the game's entire roster of characters are a bunch of bland ciphers, lacking the depth and dimensionality of even the thinnest planks of cardboard. I just... didn't care... about anything that happened... to them or to the world they inhabit.

Not terrible, sure... but hardly worth all the hoopla. In the grand scheme of things, I'd much rather just replay Lufia II.

And I am most certainly NOT going back for that True Ending.