First thing that strikes me about this game is the production values. There are some really gorgeous pre-rendered environments, and the models and animations all look great. This is one of the best looking PSX RPGs. The soundtrack is also an extremely underrated one and feels very unique.
The gameplay itself is pretty simple with a few gimmicks. The addition system is interesting and possesses a good element of risk/reward to it. It helps it stand out a bit more from all the other typical turn based games, but isn't quite as annoying as the Combo system in Xenogears and Legend of Legaia. The difficulty is mostly breezy outside of a few boss fights, but there's some really great, challenging side content in the game.
The plot is simple and not too engaging, but I found it was told really well. The plot kicks into gear pretty quickly and I found that there was very little downtime in the storytelling. This game does something that I really like in how there are moments in the game where the story is progressed by going and talking to all of your party members. This gives the characters an opportunity to feel alive whereas in most RPGs of this era your party members tend to fade into the background after their individual arc is completed.
My biggest issue with the game is with its animations. The animations look really great, but there are too many of them and they all run pretty long. The dragoon magic sequences get especially tiring considering how much of your time you'll spend in Dragoon form. There are some boss fights that took me between 30-45 minutes with at least a quarter of that time spent watching the overly elaborate boss attack sequences over and over again. It really drags down the game when even trash encounters take longer than they should. If possible play this in a way that lets you fast forward to make these segments more palatable.
There's a couple of other annoying and puzzling elements. There's a 32 item limit which I felt like I was always at. I ended up not picking up a lot of loot in dungeons simply because I didn't have item slots for it. The game also feels extremely stingy with its EXP and money. It felt like characters took forever to level up and characters on the bench would be quickly left behind. This is odd because the game definitely feels like it wants you to swap out party members to take advantage of elemental weaknesses, but characters could be left behind so easily and maintaining equipment for multiple people requires a lot of grinding.
There's a lot more effort in this game than they had to put in and it's just weighed down by a few really egregious feeling bugs.
The gameplay itself is pretty simple with a few gimmicks. The addition system is interesting and possesses a good element of risk/reward to it. It helps it stand out a bit more from all the other typical turn based games, but isn't quite as annoying as the Combo system in Xenogears and Legend of Legaia. The difficulty is mostly breezy outside of a few boss fights, but there's some really great, challenging side content in the game.
The plot is simple and not too engaging, but I found it was told really well. The plot kicks into gear pretty quickly and I found that there was very little downtime in the storytelling. This game does something that I really like in how there are moments in the game where the story is progressed by going and talking to all of your party members. This gives the characters an opportunity to feel alive whereas in most RPGs of this era your party members tend to fade into the background after their individual arc is completed.
My biggest issue with the game is with its animations. The animations look really great, but there are too many of them and they all run pretty long. The dragoon magic sequences get especially tiring considering how much of your time you'll spend in Dragoon form. There are some boss fights that took me between 30-45 minutes with at least a quarter of that time spent watching the overly elaborate boss attack sequences over and over again. It really drags down the game when even trash encounters take longer than they should. If possible play this in a way that lets you fast forward to make these segments more palatable.
There's a couple of other annoying and puzzling elements. There's a 32 item limit which I felt like I was always at. I ended up not picking up a lot of loot in dungeons simply because I didn't have item slots for it. The game also feels extremely stingy with its EXP and money. It felt like characters took forever to level up and characters on the bench would be quickly left behind. This is odd because the game definitely feels like it wants you to swap out party members to take advantage of elemental weaknesses, but characters could be left behind so easily and maintaining equipment for multiple people requires a lot of grinding.
There's a lot more effort in this game than they had to put in and it's just weighed down by a few really egregious feeling bugs.