I love the game's (slightly) gritty tone, and how realistic some of the mechanics are, such as you having to impregnate your cow before it produce milk. The idea of a farming sim going on until your character literally dies of old age is fascinating. But the characters are extremely shallow and there's not much to actually do. By the start of Year 3 I got to the point where I achieved everything notable...and there's 10 years total to go through.

The devs knew they screwed up because later re-releases reduced the amount of in-game years to 6 & added more unlockables. I might play one of those rereleases but not anytime soon. If you're reading this, get the 2023 remake. Yes, it's uglier but it's worth the trade-off.

Finally played this in light of Akira Toriyama's death. I think the writing is shallow but the game makes up for it with great presentation and pacing. The only time I felt "ugh, can we move on?" is when I played the optional DS areas. It's very ahead of it's time with inactive party members getting XP, enemies being visible instead of random, and multiple endings.

I played Undertale & Deltarune before playing this, and there's a lot of overlap between the games. The dungeons are short & stylish and the tone is a blend of humor and melancholy. Indeed, Toby Fox listened to this game's OST when designing Undertale. Anyone who likes RPGs should try this, but if you're a Toby Fox fan, this should definitely be on your list.

A lot of what I've wrote for BG1 applies here (in short, play only if you like atmospheric jank). This does have far more characterization, with some needling of D&D's racism and classism that doesn't really go anywhere. Anomen stuck out the most to me with his corruption arc. Most corruption arcs have characters becoming comically evil, but Anomen just becomes a depressed bum. Very down-to-earth.

It's more annoying to actually play than BG1, though. Enemies throw around status effects like candy, so you'll be casting the same protection spells throughout the game. It gets to the point where making your avatar a Berserker/Barbarian/Undead Hunter (immune to most status effects) or Archer (99% of status effects are melee range) is a serious QoL upgrade.

The romance system is very funny because it's based off real-time hours spent on the game, not in-game hours, so it's very possible for you to just miss out on it if you play at a brisk pace.