This game is definitely a lot better than the first one, It was rough in the beginning I felt like "Man am I gonna be able to complete this game" but once I got passed the first few hours, got some Crystal flasks, got my fountain going things really came together. I hate to do the "Dark souls" comparison but these games most likely inspired it. That being said, This game has some cool interconnectivity, once you've explored a good chunk of the world and unlocked some shortcuts stuff starts connecting together and you get a "Eureka moment" similar to how you would when you figured out which areas connected to what in Dark Souls.

This game also as NPCs again function very similarly to the NPCs in Dark Souls, you talk to them and exhaust their dialogue, they give you hints, exposition or quests. This game is just really neat and impressive for a 1995 PS1 game.

Also some advice if you play this game definitely keep a Bow on you and do not sell your Magic crystals unless you know what you're doing.