As the starting point to one of my favorite franchises ever, I can’t help but respect this game a ton. It did a lot for the time it released, and a lot of it shockingly well. It’s super primitive, but in a way that’s kinda charming looking back. There’s barely a story to speak of, but it’s okay bc the game is set up in a way that encourages you to imagine your own stories with your own characters, and that’s really cute in the sense that we rarely if ever get RPGs like that anymore. Still, this game has aged a LOT. Even under all the polish of the pixel remaster, this is still a 1987 NES RPG, and no amount of touch-ups can change that. Mechanically the game is BARE, very few interesting things going on here and I can’t help but feel like most people who have ever played an RPG before are gonna be on autopilot the entire game. Mindless is an understatement… the overwhelming majority of battles (including most bosses) can be beaten by spamming attack and nothing else. At least it’s short so it doesn’t have time to get obnoxious… this game pretty much exists as an 8-10 hour video game history lesson at that point. In that sense, I have a soft spot for it. But I can’t bring myself to genuinely recommend this as a standalone game to anyone who isn’t explicitly interested in seeing the early foundations of this series/genre.