I owned this game as a kid and at the time I thought it was super cool even though I only ever beat 2 bosses. Having played it through in its entirety as an adult I can say it is not the amazing game I thought it was. My experience with older jrpgs is really limited so keep that in mind. The game's story and characters are fine but it's just so SLOOOW. Random encounters are a thing of the past for a reason and combining that with repetitive battles and slow animations is BRUTAL. Near the end of the game, common super moves take tens of seconds per use. I've read that the original version had even more random battles. I'm not sure if that's true, but if it is... good god I can only imagine. The battle system is still cool, but VERY poorly explained.

The ship battles dear god. The ship battles are the WORST part of the game by far. Which is a shame because it's like half of the whole damn thing. I started dreading them from extremely early on because as said before they just take so LONG. You watch the ships fly by at the same "dynamic" angles for what feels like an eternity. They not nearly as fun as the main combat and somehow takes thrice as long. The last ship battle had me literally watching my ship fly in circles.

I see a lot of praise for the music but I thought it was mostly mid. The main boss theme is really good, but it's also dynamic, so in game it changes depending on how the battle is going. This would be cool if if the requirements for these versions activating wasn't so lenient. Every boss has a super move of some sort and pretty much without fail you'll be put into the grating desperation version of the theme when they use it once. The triumphant version pops up when the boss is half HP, which feels way too soon and makes it feel goofy. I only care about it because the normal theme is the only song I really give a shit about. Final boss theme was okay too.

Best bosses were the optional ones.

I wouldn't say I hate this game, I would just never play it again nor would I recommend it.