Pretty alright step up from the first game. The new ideas like the job system were implemented decently although the game never bothers explaining most of these, so it quickly became a habit to open a wiki for this game whenever I got confused. The first game still does exploration better, even though this is still leagues above FFII. This game in general feels like a redoing of the first FF, both gameplay and story wise. Pretty much the only thing carrying over from FFII was the roe mechanic during battle (which of course never got explained in this game). The difficulty is probably the best here out of the games I’ve played so far, even though there are some bullshit spikes where the solution is grinding and grinding alone near the end.
The story is probably as good as it gets for an NES game, with some of the dialogue even being pretty fun to read at times (at least in the German translation, which was the one I’ve played). Overall a decent attempt a redoing the first game with even some cool and new ideas, story and gameplay wise. Some of them just don’t feel complete yet though.