The game would not have been successful if it weren't for the era it came out in and the characters involved. It's insane to me that it is this difficult, mostly from the amount of finagling you have to do with your powers to be able to clear anything. I abandoned it towards the end due to the gauntlet of bosses that can wipe you in 3 hits while wrestling the camera and managing your clunky menu to operate healing for you and your team.

The story is of course absurd, as anyone who has any familiarity with the series will know. The writing is also pretty awkward, with matching delivery to boot.

The updated graphics look mostly good, but plenty of unrefined textures and relics from its original release. It is -mostly- fun, but the end is just such a slog of patience testing bosses that don't really feel fun or rewarding, just padding. I still plan on playing the rest of the series, but man is this a rough start

I played this one on expert mode and this is the most fun I have had with a game in a while.

Aside from the annoyance of unskippable cutscenes, there is very little majorly wrong with this game, and the reviews here saying that the game is "janky" and has "aged poorly" ring false in my ears.

The story is simple, but there are enough interesting plot threads and progressions here to keep things engaging. The game also goes through its perfect roster of worlds at such a brisk pace to where it was impossible for me to lose interest. To be honest though, the combat and side content were more than enough to keep me engaged. I understand to a small extent why some people would label the combat as "janky", but aside from a couple annoying bosses and moments everything here feels tight and punchy. There are a perfect amount of abilities and spells to play around with, and almost all of them feel useful. There are many challenging moments sprinkled throughout this game, but none of them felt like the difficulty was due to poor design choices. As long as I consistently dodged and parried, strategized well, and engaged with most of the side content, the game was smooth sailing. The game forcing me to do the side content would be a problem, if it wasn't for how much fun it is. colosseum fights, collecting secret items, and hidden bosses all feel fun to do and the game never makes these side quests outstay their welcome.

Couple more things I wanted to add at the end here. First, the party A.I. is garbage for anything other than healing, but your main playable character more than makes up for them, and having your party members heal you and serve as meat shields definitely come in clutch multiple times. The A.I. being bad is unfortunate, but it is barely a problem. Second, gummi ships are annoying, however, these sections are really easy and after a certain point you can skip most of these sections entirely. This makes gummi ships more of a minor inconvenience rather than a major problem.