A formative and strange digital world I spent a lot of time in as a kid. The way that swathes of areas change from one to another, the music, the mystery of higher levels, the limited information in online databases, the mystique of the ever-futuristic "korean versions" that had new content, the weird little rituals of fame and trading and interacting. The sense of depth as you progress towards the Zakum mines, or into the Ant Tunnel. The poor writing and at times broken localization lent itself to a lot of hypothesizing and memorability, the extreme amount of luck required to get stronger equipment bordered on hilarious.

As a game itself... well, I think this game is honest in the sense that there's a ton of grinding, and it sucks ass to do! There's a lot of bizarre and messy decisions, but it adds up (or at least did, for me as a kid) to an overall interesting experience.

Playing as an adult, the magic, of course, is gone, but it's still a game I think about and draw on from time to time.

hehe oh good i got this game added to igdb! well, I was researching fortune telling and divination last month so I decided to check out one of these games. you enter some basic information about yourself and then you can get all sort of info - daily horoscopes, or fortunes tailored to particular topics... love...work...

The horoscopes are kind of fun, they say whether it'll be a good day for X, Y or Z. Like "you'll have trouble with business negotations today!" it told me on a day where I did end up having trouble...

You can also specify friends' or.. potential lovers... names and see your compatibility.

There's a wide variety of divination methods. A lot of complicated chinese ones where you don't really understand what's going on at all.

Overall this kind of lacks that social dynamic going to a real in-person fortune teller would have, but it's also just fun to think about your day through these random fortunes. The social elements are amusing as well.

I've always thought fortune/divination would be an interesting thing implemented in game somehow - if approached from a cultural standpoint. But most of the time it's a pretty dry, stat-based treatment about passing certain dialogue choices, increasing drop rates, etc, rather than getting at the social appeal of divination and how it goes back and has held appeal for humanity for millennia as we seek to feel more certain about the future or ourselves...