This is probably one of the best looking games on the PS1 on a technical level, and aesthetically one of the best looking I've ever played. Akihiko Yoshida's art is already great, but the way his designs were adapted into the game's character models is seriously impressive. They used every trick they could think of to make the characters as expressive as possible, while using half the polygon count that FF7 and 8 did, and it's especially impressive considering the team had never worked with 3D graphics before this.

I hyped this game up for myself for a long time just based on the art style, but I had no idea how it actually played until I started. Surprisingly, the combat was also pretty great. Most of the "hard" part of the game is just being prepared, and having the right weapons for any given situation. The attribute system is cool in that it allows you to specialize and customize your weapons for use against specific enemies. I didn't mess with the crafting very much, but I imagine there's even more depth and weapon customization to be found there. The actual combat is engaging on its own, but if you're doing things right, boss fights and encounters shouldn't take very long, especially if you make use of everything you have available to you.

The story is interesting, fairly straightforward but there's a lot of things that aren't explained outright, or that are left for you to think about. Still, I wouldn't say it was hard to follow despite that, and the cutscene direction and aesthetics were strong enough that it didn't bother me.

Overall, really great game. It has a lot of unique aspects that I think it pulls off really well, and the total package isn't quite like anything I've played before.

TLDR: Sydney Losstarot is literally me 10/10