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main problem with this is that the moogle effect is completely broken. It's eno
ugh that it renders you unable to attack. That should have been all. But it caus
es you to take MASSIVE amounts of damage, often to the point where you can easil
y be killed almost instantly. The effect causes you to be completely defenseless
, so all you can do is hope you're in a place where you can just walk away, but
if you're in a position where you are trapped between enemies, you're dead. I'm
not sure exactly what the effect is, if it lowers DP or something, but To make i
t worse they're often paired near enemies that can stone you, which just freezes
you, making it possible to just get hit over and over. You can only be affected
by one effect at a time, but there's no "status invincibility" period, so you c
an be repeatedly hit by various (or the same) effects over and over. I strongly
suspect that status effects working this way was unintentional.
Yet another problem is the puzzles with buttons that you have to freeze enemies
over to push it. At least a couple of them are in positions where it's very easy
to push the snowmen against the wall, making them impossible to move to the but
ton. This wouldn't be so bad if you could just reenter the room and try again, b
ut the enemies *vital to progressing in the dungeon* don't reappear unless you g
o up/down a floor. If you're hurrying along you can rack up damage or get moog'd
trying to get back to the stairs. To make it worse, there can be black mages t
hat you have to destroy in close quarters, making it nearly impossible (or actua
lly impossible) to hit them without destroying the snowmen.
Lastly, the translation is very rough. Not unexpected considering the time perio
d and the obviously low budget of this game. I got a good laugh when the very fi
rst thing that popped up on the credits was the single (japanese) translator, as
if they were proud of the translation. I wouldn't want my name associated with
that work, lol.
For all the stuff that Link's Awakening ripped off of this game, I wish it would
have ripped off this game's length though. It ended at the right time and that
helped the somewhat thin plot be something that is actually quite memorable. The
music is some of the best I've heard on the GB, and that's really saying someth
ing since I love GB music. The game also has some really impressive visuals and
even atmosphere for a Gameboy game. The last section before the final boss with
the autumn trees and the beautiful mana temple song playing is the most memorab
le moment in the game, it creates a genuinely heavenly and otherworldly atmosphe
re as you go to the tree.
Another positive thing is that all the enemies are freaking adorable. Like in th
e desert with the mouse/scorpions and the goofy looking ...bear? things. Even th
e eyeball and the ninjas is kawaii as hell. Not to mention the snowmen. I have
no idea why they did this, since parts the game's tone are actually pretty serio
us and often grim. Some parts of this game like the leveling and the fact that y
ou're referred to as a "boy" make me think the game was aimed at kids who haven'
t played an RPG before parts make me think it was aimed at an older seasoned (J)
RPG player, with the plot filled with death like a full FF game. It seems like t
here was probably pretty poor communication for the vision of the game, which is
strange considering how small the team was if you just watch the credits.
Overall, the high review scores are a testament to how good the good parts of th
e game are despite the flaws. I definitely liked this game a lot. The music stan
ds over everything else as high quality, which probably painted my experience an
d kept me from getting frustrated. I compared to to LA a lot since it draws a lo
t of influence from Zelda, even though that might be unfair since LA came out tw
o years later. I played this in preparation to play Secret of Mana, which I than
kfully don't know much about, but I'm definitely looking forward to it if it has
any kind of similar audio/visual experience. I think I may play the remake of t
his game in the future, to see if it fixed some of these flaws at all.