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.

Even the enhancements made by the pixel remaster couldn’t save this game from being incredibly boring to sit through. I appreciate the attempt at telling a deeper story than its predecessor but even that aged horribly due to all of its limitations and still pretty basic storytelling. The general structure is also pretty annoying since it devolves into “go there, do this, return here” over and over again, making me realise once again how timeless the mostly intuitive progression of its predecessor is.

Pretty decent rpg for its time and circumstances. The overworld exploration ended up being more fun than expected and the additions of the pixel remaster helped out with the parts of the game that aged less gracefully, like the ridiculously high enemy encounter rate. Also maybe it’s the fault of this version, but the game felt pretty easy throughout up until the final boss, which was a sudden huge spike in difficulty. Overall I had more fun than expected with it but at the end of the day it’s an old ass rpg