Unlike the vast majority of Square's SNES-era releases, this game aged like milk. No doubt it was a technical marvel for its time, but there was so much frustration.
Just to zoom in on one aspect: the hit detection. Some enemies were large but had small hitboxes, it was possible to hit the hitbox but have the RNG decide that you missed, and (worst of all) sometimes enemies would experience a delayed reaction to your attack, where the damage numbers would appear several seconds after you attacked. This meant that you would often swing at an enemy for no visible effect, but you would have no idea if:
- you hit the wrong part
- you hit the right part but the RNG decided you missed
- you actually did damage but it wasn't displayed or displayed late.
In addition, thanks to the bizarre "waiting" mechanic of having to charge up your weapons, you would often end up charging your weapon for over 10 seconds, only to have the attack most likely miss anyway.
Levelling up your spells did make the game much easier, but 1) it was needlessly grindy and 2) if the most viable strategy is to select a spell off the menu to spam then you're better off playing a menu-based RPG instead.
Just to zoom in on one aspect: the hit detection. Some enemies were large but had small hitboxes, it was possible to hit the hitbox but have the RNG decide that you missed, and (worst of all) sometimes enemies would experience a delayed reaction to your attack, where the damage numbers would appear several seconds after you attacked. This meant that you would often swing at an enemy for no visible effect, but you would have no idea if:
- you hit the wrong part
- you hit the right part but the RNG decided you missed
- you actually did damage but it wasn't displayed or displayed late.
In addition, thanks to the bizarre "waiting" mechanic of having to charge up your weapons, you would often end up charging your weapon for over 10 seconds, only to have the attack most likely miss anyway.
Levelling up your spells did make the game much easier, but 1) it was needlessly grindy and 2) if the most viable strategy is to select a spell off the menu to spam then you're better off playing a menu-based RPG instead.