What a game. What a pleasure. What the hell. I loved playing this. I got all the achievements, that's my seal of approval.

A beautiful art anthology where the art is experimental RPGs from a bygone era. And like the other reviews, I'm gonna say some I unequivocally loved, some I didn't have the strongest feelings about, some wowed me with the sheer audacity of the gimmick, and Near Future was just a touch um, how you say... big potty.

Summarizing like that though doesn't really convey how satisfying it feels to be able to play a RPG like this in these compact 1-4 hour full experiences. It doesn't convey how delightful it is to reach the final chapter and assemble your far flung heroes for one last grand adventure. And that final boss! I feel like I can't spoil a thing about it because it's so damn hype.

I was playing a Final Fantasy right. One of the older ones. I was struck by how sloppy the design was, how tedious, how lacking in intent, how small bad decisions snowballed into long gameplay struggles. And how some of those design choices I recalled were echoed still in later entries in that franchise I had more nostalgia for. I thought about feeling lied to by my own nostalgia. I have never played the original Live A Live. I picked this game up just cuz I hoped it would give me the thing I wanted from that other game, and it did.

I teared up at the end, all my guys coming together in that wonderful, cheesy, epic power of friendship JRPG way.

That is not the fairest, most objective measure of quality. But it meant something to me, and maybe it will mean something to someone else.

P.S. Yoko Shimomura GOAT

This game means so much to me. It is really difficult for me to be objective about it. My current playthrough would be the fifth time in my life I will have completed Legend of Mana and whoops I missed an early quest so I guess I will have to do a sixth playthrough down the line to get the achievement for doing all the quests in one run.

I think this game's story was really misunderstood by the Western market when it first came out. Its episodic structure and collection of deeply poignant short story cycles set in a lush, interesting world would probably have been lauded as an artistic breakthrough in games if it came out ten years after it did. Fa'Diel is a beautifully painted, extremely memorable, masterfully scored and orchestrated, handcrafted world. Every time I play this game, it feels like coming home.

I also think that richness of elaborate oddball mechanics and the dedication to secrets that this game possesses is something that I admire a lot, and which I actually wish I saw more of in modern games which often streamline and smooth to the point of feeling depthless. Few modern games understand the virtue of mysteries.

To cite a flaw though and have even accounting, I feel very whelmed about the combat in this game. It can be fun in places, certainly it scratches the power fantasy itch when you come in hot with a weapon you've just stuck a bunch of clown or cleric cards on, but it's definitely not what makes this game the jewel that it is.

I think I like all the changes I have noticed in the remaster, particularly the ability to turn off encounters and save everywhere. I think this is pretty good preservation work from Square Enix or whoever they outsourced. Though, they should have made it work on Steamdeck.

I don't know that there has ever been another game like this. I don't know if there will ever be another game like this again. That's okay. Stars spin as they fall, when you're trying to catch your breath. What's that mean? It's a secret.