The game hooks you at the beginning with a nice story set up, varied dialogue with your partner in a lively environment, and whilst it doesn't stick the landing throughout the whole game, the story becoming a bit rushed at the end, and a lot of design issues gameplay wise, its still worth a shot for the dark themes/mood of the game. To make the game less frustrating, be aware of what's below.
Things to Note When Playing:
- To allow you to upgrade your sword, you have to go to a certain cave, north-west the boat town to meet the blacksmith, then he will appear in all following towns.

- You can blow up cracked walls to progress in certain dungeons of the game, which is relatively easy, however note that to progress in the forest, you must blow up wood stumps, and in the earth tower, you have to blow up two consecutive wood walls, then a cracked wall.

- At a certain point, you have to travel through a fire cave, which requires you to do a 360 special attack to progress. If your PG is below 80 at this point, you cannot do the spell, so either get equipment to raise your PG, or grind a bit.

- If you go into a room full of enemies, and can't leave via the door, you must defeat all enemies to exit all doors. In one dungeon this only blocks the north exit, which coincidentally is where you must go to progress, so bear that in mind.

- All dungeons in the game require bombs at certain points to progress, which you have plenty of, however the Earth Tower requires 5 bombs near the end. STOCK UP BEFORE THIS. If you don't, you'll have to backtrack 20 minutes to a statue, fast travel out the dungeon, buy bombs, fast travel back to the dungeon's entrance, then travel for around 1 hour to get back to the 5 bombs room.

- In boss rooms, for some unknown reason, you can't access your menu to change items/elementals. This is important since certain elementals barely damage bosses/enemies of other types, so SAVE before the boss, try the battle, if you are barely doing any damage, restart the game and change elemental.